The Czech News Agency (Česká tisková kancelář, CTK) is Czechia’s national public service news agency. It publishes news in Czech and English (its Slovak service was terminated in 2011). The agency was established in 1918 on the day when the state of Czechoslovakia was formed.
Media assets
News agency: CTK
State Media Matrix Typology: Independent State Managed (ISM)
Ownership and governance
The agency is regulated by the CTK Act adopted in 1992. CTK was formed as a public corporation independent from the government and accountable solely to the public.
The main governance structure of CTK is the Czech News Agency Council, which consists of five members appointed by the Chamber of Deputies for a period of five years. The Council appoints the agency’s General Director. Politicians or people who hold a public office can’t be appointed to the CTK Council. The members of the CTK Board, however, are not appointed based on nominations from civil society, which gives authorities a certain level of control in the agency’s governance bodies.
Source of funding and budget
According to the CTK Act, the agency is financed mainly through commercial revenues that it has to generate on its own from sale of content. The law stipulates that the agency may receive state subsidies in some situations, but they can’t be used to cover losses incurred by the agency.
In 2020, most of the CTK’s budget was generated from sales of content and other services. In total, CTK had total revenues of CZK 267m (US$ 12.5m) in 2020, most of which was the result of sales of news content, photos, videos and other news-related services, according to an annual report.
In 2021, the agency recorded sales of products and services to the tune of CZK 282.6m (US$ 12.9m), according to a company annual report. Including compensation and subsidies from the EU, its income totaled CZK 291.1m (US$ 13.3m) in 2021.
Editorial independence
There are no restrictive rules imposed on the editorial policy of CTK. The financial self-sustainability of CTK has empowered the agency to build and defend its independence. To our knowledge, there is no evidence in recent years of a pro-government bias in CTK’s editorial coverage, which is mostly a result of the logic behind the agency’s funding model: to be commercially viable and able to sell content, CTK has to ensure its reporting is fact-based and unbiased.
The CTK Code is a domestic statute that requires the agency’s staff to comply with a set of public service media principles and editorial rules that ensure the independence of the agency.
The CTK Council is the body in charge, among other things, to supervise, monitor and assess the work of the agency with a view to ensuring that it complies with existing legal provisions and that its coverage is independent and objective. However, given the way it is appointed, the council can’t be characterized as independent.
October 2023