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Czech NGOs complain to broadcast oversight board about coverage of Romani man's death

02 April 2014
2 minute read

The In IUSTITIA and ROMEA organizations in the Czech Republic have jointly filed a complaint with the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting (Rada pro rozhlasové a televizní vysílání – RRTC) over recent news reporting by TV NOVA. The reportage at issue concerned the verdict in the case of the death of a Romani man in Teplice. 

The organizations say the reportage included untrue claims and that TV NOVA has damaged the reputation of the man who fell victim to a lethal attack. "We are turning to you with a complaint about the publishing of untrue information during the main news broadcast of TV NOVA on the evening of 25 March 2014, which included a reportage about an attack committed last May in Teplice during which a Romani man was murdered. Many pieces of untrue information were included in that reportage, but we believe the most fundamental error was the fact that the moderator of the Television News program, Renáta Czadernová, opened the piece by describing the entire incident as the killing of a sausage thief (specifically, she said:  ‘A man who killed a thief over a sausage has been sentenced to five years in prison.’). The rest of what was said implies that the theft of a sausage, according to the TN reporting, was the impulse for the attack," the organizations state in their complaint.    

The attorney for the victims, however, says that during the course of the trial it was essentially proven beyond any doubt that no such theft ever occurred, which the judge also stated when explaining his verdict, an explanation for which journalists from TV NOVA were present. Klára Kalibová of In IUSTITIA and Zdeněk Ryšavý of ROMEA believe the deceased victim has been untruthfully described in the reportage as a thief, which has greatly damaged his good name and distorted the overall reporting of the case so as to blame the victim.    

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