In November 1989, Czechoslovakia returned to a liberal democracy through the peaceful "Velvet Revolution" (led by Václav Havel and his Civic Forum).
This also affected the media that became free of the heavy-handed control of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and were able to develop in a competitive environment.
[1] However, even before the Velvet Revolution and despite the persecutions, there were illegally published magazines within the Samizdat phenomenon, which allowed for the circulation of dissident ideas among people who possessed positions of cultural power and authority.
Since the Soviet Union’s dissolution, most Czech media outlets have been owned by non-Czech western companies.
[citation needed] Czech Republic has four main daily newspapers: Lidové noviny (former dissident publication); Mladá fronta DNES (with a centre-right orientation); Právo (with a centre-left political position) and Blesk, all based in Prague.
[2] Both Lidové noviny and Mladá fronta DNES are a part of the MAFRA publishing group, owned by Andrej Babiš, the former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
[7] Commercial television has a major place in the Czech media landscape and attracts almost half of the total advertising spend.
[11] However RSF also underlined the fact that in recent years there had been a “rise of the oligarchs” in the media landscape, and stated that the public broadcaster Czech Television "is facing an upheaval after some of the members of its supervisory board were replaced by well-known figures who are very critical of investigative reporting".
[13] Some notable incidents concerning censorship and media freedom took place in the country: According to the Prague Security Studies Institute, there is a pro-Russian disinformation campaign originating from numerous pro-Russian websites, social media communities, printed periodicals as well as radio broadcasts targeting Czechs and Slovaks.
[19] David Kotora, from Transparency International Czech Republic, confirmed that the sites blocked have been used by Russia to spread propaganda for many years.
[22] Andrej Babiš, former Czech Prime Minister, owns two of the most influential daily newspapers (Lidové Noviny and Mlada Fronta Dnes) and one of the most popular news website iDnes.cz.
[12] However, some experts consider the Czech Republic to be one of the hubs in the EU territory for the few Pan-European media companies controlling large part of broadcasting market in Europe.