Somewhere in the Balkans

As Jiří Paroubek was hobnobbing in Brussels yesterday with his fellow EU prime ministers, his long arms back in Prague were canceling one of the best shows on television, "Bez obalu." It is Czech TV's top-rated public-interest program, but it has also been critical at times of Paroubek and his government. Paroubek complained officially about it three times and referred to it as "political pornography." The management at Czech TV couldn't hold up to the pressure - that increase in the monthly user's fee didn't come for free - and canceled the show, because it was "expensive" and "unbalanced." In a proper democracy, the show would have been warned, and perhaps even fined, if it had violated rules about balanced coverage. But Paroubek will brook no dissent. He famously said that Balkan-like conditions reign in the Czech media. If it's true, it's because he's creating them. [Czech Republic European Union journalism Czech Television]