Actually, having googled and looked around I am highly conflicted on this. There is no coverage either pro/con in The Times, The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/freedom-of-speech-and-...), LA Times, Washington Post, The Economist, The Guardian.

There are mentions only on disreputable English language media like Breitbart, forums like Reddit that all go back to citing BalkanInsight¹,² who in turn cite a publication called TN Nova³.

1. https://birn.eu.com/news-and-events/meet-the-people-behind-b...

2. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/03/01/czechia-mulls-penalisin...

3. https://tn.nova.cz/zpravodajstvi/clanek/455893-za-podporu-ru...

This root/source one is hard to evaluate. Not speaking the language or having much of a clue about it it is hard to tell whether their other stories about e.g. 30,000 Ukranian refugees arriving and being given apartments and insurance are meant to be laudatory or stir up resentment.

But there is a website⁴ which seems to belong to the Czech Republic justice ministry if I am reading their ssl cert correctly. Using translation software suggests that this is accurate reporting of statements by their chief prosecutor:

4. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226184549/http://verejnazal...

In addition I found what seemed to be a non-fake news media platform (Radio Prague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Prague) which reported the same interpretation in English⁵ here

5. https://english.radio.cz/chief-prosecutor-warns-against-publ...

and this Czech language one⁶ which is more detailed:

6. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226151448/https://www.irozh...

While trying to discern if this is actually Russians trying to make the EU look like a bunch of authoritarians restricting information I found this fascinating quote on wikipedia:

"Fake news outlets in the Czech Republic redistribute news in Czech and English originally produced by Russian sources. Czech president Miloš Zeman has been supporting media outlets accused of spreading fake news.[252]

The Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH) is unit of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic primarily aimed at countering disinformation, fake news, hoaxes and foreign propaganda. The CTHH started operations on January 1, 2017. The CTHH has been criticized by Czech President Miloš Zeman, who said: "We don't need censorship. We don't need thought police. We don't need a new agency for press and information as long as we want to live in a free and democratic society."[253]

In 2017 media activists started a website Konspiratori.cz maintaining a list of conspiracy and fake news outlets in Czech.[254] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#Europe

So where am I left? Uncertain. It looks like a real government website with a statement that to my probably naive eyes has been reported accurately in a few places. But I find it hard to believe that none of the big-hitter, reputable news outlets has completely refused to cover this.

If this does turn out to be true and completely unreported then it's a terrible reflection of reputable media coverage. A lot of the states recently admitted to the EU have a fragile relationship with norms around democracy, free speech, invidual sexual and reproducive rights. This, if true, would definitely indicate that the ex-Communist czech government officials are on a very different tangent to the core states of the EU.

If the story turns out not to be true then it's also a terrible reflection of media coverage in that this story is obviously out there doing the rounds and needs to be addressed and debunked.

Would love to hear from Czech speakers/readers about how I got this wrong.