Czech regulator finds radio station broke law with anti-Romani broadcasts
The Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting (Rada pro rozhlasové a televizní vysílání – RRTV) is asking the Impuls radio station in the Czech Republic to correct its broadcasting of opinions about Romani people, which the regulator has indicated are prejudicial. According to Impuls’s PR manager, the station will not appeal the RRTV decision and will uphold the deadline by which to make the corrections.
Council: Impuls broke the law
During a recent session, the RRTV arrived at the opinion that broadcasts by Impuls on 19 September 2013 as part of its "Topic of the Day" block of programming broke the law on operating a radio or television broadcast. Specifically, the content violated regulations stating that a broadcaster is obliged "not to include programs in its programming that could uphold stereotypical prejudices about ethnic, racial or religious minorities."
According to the regulator, the station "predominantly broadcast only opinions that reproduced and shored up prejudicial stereotypes about Romani people as individuals living on the fringe of society because of their different characteristics and values compared to majority-society people, as individuals who do not want to ‘adapt’, who do not work, who do not want to work, who prefer to abuse or collect welfare, and who therefore live on taxpayer money." The council established a deadline by which the operator of the Impuls station, the LONDA s.r.o. company, must issue a correction: Seven days from the date of receipt of the warning.
Impuls: We will uphold the correction deadline
Romea.cz asked the Impuls radio station whether it plans to appeal the decision or whether it accepts it, and if so, what form the corrections required by RRTV will take. Tomáš Přenosil, PR manager for Impuls, provided a somewhat confused, incomplete response.
The first written response received from him was the following: "In this specific case we have only received a warning, so an appeal would not be in order." In response to follow-up questions Přenosil responded: "On 19 August we received a warning that the law had been broken and we were given a deadline for corrections, which naturally we will uphold."
Romea.cz then asked once more what those corrections would consist of. The PR manager responded that he unfortunately did not have that information available at the moment.
