What's actually in the Czech Government's plan to combat disinformation?

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has been compared in these reactions to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and then president of Czechoslovakia, Gustáv Husák, or to Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS in Nazi Germany. The sad fact is that the vast majority of individuals passionately arguing about the Action Plan haven’t even read it.

In order to introduce some rationality into the discussion, I will be summarizing the crucial points of this plan on the media. I’m beginning with some premises with which I hope most democratically-minded citizens agree.

1. Disinformation is a basic security threat with the potential to compromise the running of democratic institutions and processes related to the rule of law and domestic security.
2. European Union bodies, NATO, and the Member States of both the EU and NATO have been warning of the danger of disinformation for some time.
3. Domestic security agencies led by the Security Information Service (BIS) and military intelligence have repeatedly warned for many years now that disinformation campaigns are underway in the Czech Republic which are connected to a great degree (whether directly or indirectly) with the interests of China and Russia.
4. This disinformation is being disseminated by both “foreign powers” and “domestic sources”.
5. The Czech state does not yet have the necessary instruments on hand to succesfully face this powerful wave of disinformation.

The “Action Plan”

Since March 2022, combating disinformation has been the purview of Czech Government Commissioner on the Media and Disinformation Michal Klíma. His main task has been designing the “Action Plan for Combating Disinformation.”

Klíma finished the Action Plan in mid-November and it is now waiting for the interministerial commenting process to begin, after which it will be discussed in cabinet. Information about the Action Plan and its details was published by the daily Deník N on 27 December 2022 after they viewed an advance copy.

I have not found any other newsrooms who have actually accessed the plan. That, of course, has not prevented the public from passionately joining the discussion with harsh invective, audiovisually or in writing, alleging censorship, the end to freedom of speech, and Government corruption of journalism.

HlídacíPes.org also had an opportunity to study the Action Plan in detail. For the sake of introducing rationality into the debate, I am publishing its crucial points on the media and commenting on them.

A) Financial support for the NGO sector and for a system to support the independent media

Unfortunately, when publishing their initial information about the existence of the plan, Deník N did so with serious inconsistencies, and that has given the critics of Klíma (and of the Government) ammunition. The daily wrote that the state wants “to spend tens of millions of crowns annually to support the media and nonprofits doing their best to eliminate fake news.”

That allegation has now begun to live a life of its own. The reality is that Klíma is proposing allocating CZK 50 million [EUR 2 million] for nonprofits involved in “educating about the media, fact-checking services, and raising awareness generally about this issue and about the activities of foreign states as actors”.

What I consider to be a blessing in this news is the support for education about the media in the schools and for analyzing the aims and moves of communist China or Putin’s Russia. In the case of fact-checking, however, in the past we have unfortunately witnessed more than one fatal “misstep” by “verifiers” here.

As far as support for independent media goes, the Action Plan also proposes allocating CZK 100 million [EUR 4 million] annually for grant programs because “the independent media play an irreplaceable role when informing the public and, in the final result, contribute to lowering disinformation’s influence” – not a word is said here about supporting media that “eliminate disinformation”. In other words, the state will support the work of professional journalists so that people, thanks to their high-quality work, will have a greater chance of accessing information that is relevant and verified.

By doing so, the influence of disinformation will be weakened. This logical measure has been in practice for many years in countries to the west of the Czech Republic.

Naturally, much depends on how the grant system is established and how transparent the decisions to award such grants will be. This outcry about the Government allegedly “corrupting journalists”, however, has to be considered a display of either bad intent, ideological blindness, or ignorance.

B) Central planning of ads bought by the state, demonetization of the disinformation scene

“Demonetization of the disinformation scene” is understood to mean the attempt to cut off the flow of money to such websites from advertising bought by the state. At the same time, the Action Plan counts on supporting the efforts now underway of NGO initiatives to cut off these websites from ads placed by private actors.

It is difficult to doubt the correctness of this move. However, “demonetization” is to be followed by another step that has yet to be discussed publicly.

That would be an attempt to begin a new system for distributing the money for the advertising bought by the state, or by those enterprises in which the state owns a significant share, in order to “arrange for the transparent, effective planning of the state’s advertising resources for the purpose of supporting media pluralism.” A newly-created Department of Strategic Communications and Combating Disinformation at the Office of the Government would be in charge of that.

Crucial here is the formulation of “supporting media pluralism”. Thanks to the existing system, state-funded advertising has all but exclusively targeted the big media houses which are controlled by the oligarchs (Babiš, Křetínský, Dospiva, PPF…), for whom media ownership is above all a resource supporting their main businesses which are dependent, to a great degree, on good relationships with municipalities and the state itself.

Klíma is planning to change that by making it possible, in the future, for the advertising by the state and quasi-state firms to be bought from smaller media houses and projects to a greater extent; naturally, this is also associated with the proposed grant program of EUR 4 million annually. In short, this is the first indication of the Government’s promised support for diversity in the media, so crucial to the democratic nature of the state.

C) Blocking content that endangers national security, penal code regulation of the intentional spreading of disinformation

In this aspect, the Action Plan is not contributing anything new or revolutionary – basically, it just says that the Interior Ministry shall prepare two new legal regulations, a bill to block online content endangering national security and the security interests of the state, and a bill to amend criminal law to include the offense of intentionally spreading disinformation aiming to endanger the democratic nature of the state or to endanger the security interests of the state. Logically, these two bills will bring up big concerns and doubts (justified ones).

Personally, I am for a legislative framework to block websites in exceptional cases. When I say “websites”, that is what I mean – not “media outlets”.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, websites here were shut down where those working on them were not journalists, but activists, including paid propagandists. As far as amending the criminal law to include the offense of “disseminating disinformation”, I am convinced that the existing legal regulations for prosecuting and convicting disinformers are enough.

Clearly-identified partisan commentary and reporting are not disinformation

As for this debate about whether it is or is not clear what disinformation actually is and is not, allow me to cite Milan Šmíd from the Louč website, who, with regard to Klíma’s Action Plan, has recalled the definition in the European Commission’s Communication of 2018 entitled “Tackling online disinformation: a European Approach”:

“Disinformation is understood as verifiably false or misleading information that is created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive the public, and may cause public harm. Public harm comprises threats to democratic political and policy-making processes as well as public goods such as the protection of EU citizens’ health, the environment or security.”

Here I would add that according to this same definition, commentaries and reporting that are clearly identified as partisan, errors in news reporting, parody, and satire do not count as disinformation.