by Miloš Hroch, Charles University
The second Czech Citizens’ Parliament on Media and Democracy was held on April 5 at the Palacký University in Olomouc, which was so kind to offer us a shelter. Nineteen citizens – active seniors, NGO employees, or a retired programmer – travelled to Olomouc to deliberate in the spaces once occupied by the Jesuit order that established a public university in 1573 as the second oldest in the country. This Saturday was particularly exciting for everyone, as the Citizens’ Parliament was about to adopt the first resolutions for subtopics related to “Media Systems”, which citizens developed at the first meeting and broadened in the second.
What about municipal media?
We kicked off the day with presentations from two experts: Karel Páral from the Department of Media and Cultural Studies and Journalism spoke about how media systems theories used to focus exclusively on printed media or television, but today, we need to consider the power of platform corporations as well. Lawyer Marek Zelenka introduced participants to the workings of the municipal press, which is published by city halls around the Czech Republic: how such media in most cases serve only as an extension of mayors’ politics rather than sources of independent journalism tackling the local problems. Both lessons inspired our participants and led them to later group discussions.
The Citizens’ Parliament then went into several exercises, during which citizens approved the subtopics from the first meeting, developed additional subtopics and voted about their priorities. Then, in the most demanding phase of the day, they created resolutions for subtopics, where citizens deliberated about issues like how to guarantee diversity and pluralism through media legislation, how to make governance through media councils more effective, how to ensure financial support for community media or how to improve conditions of work for journalists.
The first set of resolutions
It was amazing to observe the energy in the room, which remained at the same level throughout the afternoon, even though some participants complained about time pressures for developing resolutions. One resolution suggested that media law should guarantee financial support for independent and community media, and another recommended improving the election process for media councils, such as including media experts to supervise the procedure. Citizens also adopted a resolution advising the state to support the founding of an independent organization that will help journalists unionize and secure protection or better salaries. Despite the pressure, citizens reached an agreement on 16 resolutions out of 20 proposals, which we found an extraordinary achievement—this gives us hope for the third meeting in Brno, and we also learnt some important lessons about the process.