In the end, experts concluded that it would be impossible to introduce a press law in Britain without seriously jeopardising basic freedoms of expression. No such qualms seem to exist in the Czech Republic. On 7 July 1999, in spite of vociferous protests from the Czech media, the Czech Parliament passed the first reading of a controversial draft press law and handed it on to the relevant parliamentary committees for discussion. The Czech media are generally second rate. There is no authoritative, independent, investigative journalism.
Czech journalists are, on the whole, afraid to stand out from the crowd.
They huddle together, hiding behind prejudices, cliches and the political lines of their newspapers. Their meekness and incompetence is accompanied by arrogance. It is customary for establishment elites in Central Europe to assume they know better than the ordinary citizen, and they tell him so regularly in no uncertain terms. Rather than revealing new problems, introducing new ideas into Czech society and helping to create an agenda for the government, the Czech media peddle safe cliches, which they try to impose on the general public. They tell the citizen what to think.