Czech Republic: Broadcasting regulator suddenly lost its quorom when vote was taken on Prima's coverage of refugees
At its session on 19 April, the Council on Radio and Television Broadcasting
in the Czech Republic addressed an agenda item regarding a reportage broadcast
about Christian refugees from Iraq. According to the complaint submitted, the
Prima television station manipulated the information it broadcast.
When the Council voted on that particular item, however, it suddenly no
longer had a quorum, even though all of the other 59 resolutions it voted on
that same day did have a quorum and were therefore binding votes. The reportage
broadcast on 11 February in Prima’s main news program prompted strong emotions
and many conjectures and reactions in the Czech Republic.
One of the refugees in the report allegedly expressed himself in very
critical terms regarding the accommodation he and his group had been offered in
the town of Jihhlava. After the report was aired, a dispute arose over whether
he had actually made the remarks as they were subtitled for Czech viewers.
It turned out that the interpretation of his remarks had in fact been
misleading. The Council then received many complaints about the report.
Seventeen members of the Senate of the Czech Republic were among those
complaining. They believe that Law No. 231/2001 on the operation of radio and
television broadcasting might have been violated, in particular the
responsibility to not incite hatred.
The Council spent several months addressing the complaint. On the basis of
their investigation into the report and the doubts about its accuracy, the
Council asked FTV Prima for an explanation of its conduct.
The Council reviewed that explanation during its 19 April session and
subsequently called for a vote on a decision in the matter that was apparently
developed for them by their own analysts. According to the proposed resolution,
Prima broke the law by changing "the statement by respondent Georgis Batto, who
had traveled here with his family from Lebanon, about his determination to
return there should the asylum accommodation prove unsuitable, into a statement
that he specifically intended to return to Iraq because of unsuitable asylum
accommodation, i.e., to return to a country at war, and this augmenting of his
comments by inserting the mention of Iraq was untrue."
The proposed resolution further states that: "What also contributed to the
untruthfulness was that the operator of the station, in this reportage,
contrasted the respondent’s generally expressed dissatisfaction with the level
of the asylum housing that would be offered to his family with the positive
statements of other persons about the quality of the specific apartments offered
to the family, as if the same thing were being discussed by all of them, even
though in the former case the statement was a general, hypothetical one, while
in the latter it was a statement about specific apartments, and the contrast of
those statements was misleading; another factor were the allegations by the news
crew that the Iraqi family did not like the accommodation offered, a statement
that was made both by the anchor introducing the reportage and by the reporter
during the reportage, even though the Batto family member interviewed never made
any such direct statement. The operator has violated its responsiblity to ensure
that the principles of balance and objectivity be upheld in news reporting and
political feature programs."
Only six members of the Council then cast votes for this decision describing
Prima’s wrongdoing, even though for the subsequent decisions on the agenda all
10 of the members present cast votes, as they did for most of the resolutions
described in the minutes of the meeting. The vote on the agenda item about
Prima, therefore, was not binding because there was no quorum.
According to the available information, the Council has not returned to the
case and has therefore not taken any decision on it. We are investigating how it
is possible that four voters suddenly were no longer present during the vote on
the agenda item concerning Prima.
