Josef Chuchma
Vladimir Zelezny has completed his historical role as Chief Executive of Nova TV. He has launched a TV station which works and which does not need to be supported by his manipulative public performances on the air - at least if the station is as financially stable as Zelezny says it is.
Mr Zelezny's regular shows [Ask the Director] on NOVA TV have now assumed a threatening as well as an absurd appearance. If Zelezny is really interested in freedom of speech, in truth and in the interests of his viewers - which is what he often likes to dwell on - he should now resign from the post of Nova TV's Chief Executive on his own initiative. He should do so if he is a man.
He can retain the shares in the companies that own Nova TV or he can buy even more shares - if he does so legally. Let him work in a office - say, as an energetic and hard-working general manager somewhere - for the prosperity of his new firm. Or let him stay at home as an affluent shareholder and let him go back to his earlier skill - writing film scripts.
None of these activities can harm Zelezny personally and TV Nova as an institution more than the tantrums he has been displaying recently.
In December 1996, Zelezny assured the nation that he was ethically as pure as virgin snow. His employees had used the technique of the paparazzis and filmed Czech President on his hospital bed at the time of his lung cancer operation through the window from the building opposite. Zelezny, as a "wise chief executive" decided that only "very proper" footage of the President would be broadcast. Nova TV transmitted only those secretly filmed images of Havel, in which the President was half sitting, dressed, on his bed, although the station "owns footage of a much more, truly private situation, which came immediately thereafter".
Jiri Penas has already defined this hyenism in the Respekt weekly relatively precisely. He has written: "This kind of ethical cannibalism can no longer be explained only by saying that Nova is a tabloid TV station and that this is why it behaves in a gutter press manner. No, it is obvious that the decision to broadcast the secretly filmed footage of President Havel was calmly made by an expert who is convinced that even the most doubftul deed is justified by what it serves for."
Zelezny has become even more horrendous since. The worst to date was his broadcast "Ask the director" on 1st February, 1997. He played on air the emotional voice of viewer Dvorakova from Prague 10 who begged him: "Please, tell us truthfully how things really stand, all this campaign against Nova TV what does this mean?" Zelezny reacted: "Yes, I have not experienced such a campaign in the Czech media for a long time. The last such an extensive campaign was waged [by the communist media in 1977] agaisnt [the democratic, dissident movement] Charter 77. I of course do not want to make any comparisons."
The problem is that Zelezny of course is making comparisons. Not in terms of facts, because he knows that that would be going too far, but in emotions.
He needs to create the impression in his viewers that Nova TV exists in spite of its enemies, it is threatened from everywhere, it is being oppressed, it is exposed to the united onslaught of all the other media. Cleverly, he counts on the fact that none of his viewers will actually go and read everything that has been written about NOVA TV in the Czech papers recently.
Zelezny used the same principle in his programme a week earlier when he called Petr Stepanek, the Deputy Head of the Council for Radio and TV broadcasting "a sillly jerk" on air. On 1st February, Zelezny assured us that this was allegedly only a general statement, not intended to hurt anyone.
Of course this was not the case. He attacked Stepanek concretely. He needed to create an atmosphere of confrontation which would strengthen his own position and also would reinforce the loyalty of his viewers to him.
"Any silly jerk can cast doubt on the honest work of four hundred people who have created this TV station," said Zelezny and then added, a moment later, like a Kind Daddy: "You have been with us for all the time we have been building this TV station."
The pattern is well known [from the communist times]: "Do not let envious subversives subvert our common journey towards the future, our honest, constructive work!"
Of course, the honest constructive work does include the filming of President Havel on a hospital bed, implies Zelezny.
We are a firm which publishes absolutely all information about ourselves, boasted Zelezny in Ask the Director on 1st February. He did not say which firm he meant: Was this CET 21 Ltd, the holder of the broadcasting licence? Was it CET 21 PLC, whose purpose is unclear and for which Zelezny had recently received a loan from the American company CME? Or was it CNTS NOVA, which actually does the broadcasting?
When Zelezny "openly" explained, why he had barred the camera of Czech public service Television from his news conference, he absurdly said that this was not a news conference at all. It was an "information meeting", for which "some journalists were invited", but "the information given was not public". After all, Czech public service TV had been admitted, two of its employees were sitting there. [They had been let in only by mistake, as it later transpired, Translator's Note].
Zelezny however did not say to his viewers that reporters from Prace, Tyden and Slovo HAD been barred from the meeting.
When Zelezny talked about the current conflict with the Slovak Markiza TV, he tried to create the impression he was giving concrete facts, but then he betrayed himself by expressions such as "I am not sure", "as far as we know",
"I think".
Simply, Vladimir Zelezny behaves like a megalomaniac. What he thinks MIGHT be the truth merges for him with facts. He confuses his personal moods with reality. He is both extremely rational and unable to control himself.
This is actually a fairly common complaint. However, it should not happen to the chief executive of the most powerful mass medium in the country.
Mlada fronta Dnes daily (printrun approximately 500 000 copies), Prague, 4th February 1997.