The populist former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš has been accused of subverting press freedom after he used the front pages of two national newspapers he owns to attack the integrity of independent news outlets and urge readers to follow him on social media as an alternative.
The extraordinary broadside was carried by the Mladá Fronta Dnes and Lidové noviny papers a week before Babiš – a billionaire tycoon and one of the Czech Republic’s richest men – stands trial for alleged subsidy fraud.
Critics said he had humiliated and explicitly belittled the work of the journalists he employs by using the newspapers – previously among the most respected in the Czech Republic – to run two identical front pages dominated by his picture and bearing the headline: “Do you believe the media?”
České denníky Mladá fronta Dnes a Lidové noviny dnes vyšli s inzerciou Andreja Babiša, ktorá na titulnej strane spochybňuje nestrannosť a objektivitu novinárov.
— Richard Balázs (@balazsrichard) September 5, 2022
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A series of leading follow-up questions underneath asked: “Don’t you feel that television, newspapers and news websites are only telling you part of the story? That they don’t talk about anything? That they leave something out? Or are they deliberately omitting something?”
Babiš’s supporters justified the front-page message as merely an advert for his social media TV show, Čau lidi, which other Czech newspapers had declined to accept. His message continued: “Try my advice. Every Monday afternoon. For over five years. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.”
But Veronika Sedláčková, from the Czech branch of the International Press Institute, said it was “an attack on serious journalism and serious media”.
She added: “Mr Babiš has done it for a long time and this is not so different from his previous statements. His goal is to weaken the influence of serious media, and weaken public trust in the journalists and democratic institutions of the Cezch Republic.”
His message – pointedly underlined with his signature – was published in advance of the scheduled appearance by Babiš before Prague municipal court on 12 September on charges of fraudulently obtaining €2m (£1.7m) in EU small business funds to build a hotel and conference centre in the Bohemian countryside.
If convicted, Babiš, 68, faces a maximum of 10 years in jail, although prosecutors have proposed three years’ probation and a 10m Czech koruna (£350,000) fine. The former prime minister was charged in March last year, five months after losing power in a general election, after MPs voted to lift his parliamentary immunity to prosecution.
Babiš, the leader of the Action for Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party, denies the charges, which date back to 2007, and describes them as politically motivated.
Michal Klíma, the Czech commissioner for the media and countering disinformation, said Babiš’s actions amounted to an attack on media freedom.
“The former editor of Mladá Fronta Dnes said on social media that this represented the ultimate collapse of his old newspaper and I absolutely agree – it’s terrible,” said Klima. “But Andrej Babiš has been attacking free media from the beginning, and that’s the reason he bought these newspapers: to influence them and change them from the path of independence.”
Jiří Pehe, a Czech political analyst and the director of New York University in Prague, said Babiš’s anti-media missive was “a blatant misuse of newspapers” aimed at diverting attention away from his legal troubles.
The two papers fell under Babiš’s control in 2013 after he bought the Mafra publishing group – also giving him ownership of the Czech Republic’s biggest commercial radio station – and added it to his sprawling Agrofert conglomerate, a multi-industrial empire comprising more than 250 companies.
Many journalists subsequently left and observers say Babiš has used the publications to promote his political interests, including a possible run in the next presidential election in January 2023.
Babiš has not declared his candidacy, but has been touring the country in a camper van in recent months to stage political rallies bearing the hallmarks of campaign events. Analysts, however, believe he is undecided about running given private internal polling indicating that he would be unlikely to beat Petr Pavel, a retired army general and former Nato commander.
Babiš’s campaign to win re-election as prime minister was dealt a blow days before polling last year when the Guardian and other outlets revealed disclosures in the Pandora Papers that he had bought a chateau in the south of France for £13m, with funds from a complex and mysterious offshore structure, years before entering politics.
At the time, his office did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment on his offshore companies.
French prosecutors recently announced that they had opened an investigation into the case.
