Prague - Judicial and police harassment of journalists is a major issue not just in authoritarian countries. Czech journalists have been lately busy trying to protect their own fundamental rights - source protection and right to publish wiretaps.
Last week saw Czech MPs overturning a Senate veto on a bill that bans publishing police wiretapped recordings of people without their consent. If president Václav Klaus signs the bill, breaching the law would send journalists to prison or impose a multi-million fine on them.
As soon as Czech lawmakers overturned the Senate's veto, the first journalist has been fined for protection of her source.
Prosecution handed a CZK 20,000 fine to reporter Sabina Slonková after she refused to disclose the source of a controversial CCTV footage aired by internet online daily Aktuálně.cz.
That happened in early December last year, now district court judge Blanka Bedřichová upheld the fine for Slonková.
Dirty business
The footage showed a secret meeting in Prague's Hotel Savoy of President Václav Klaus's chancellor Jiří Weigl with Miloslav Šlouf, controversial lobbyist and former adviser to Social Democrat PM Miloš Zeman shortly before the presidential election in February 2008.
The publication of the material sparked speculations about backstage deals between the president and the current opposition.
Source protection
Source protection is guaranteed by Czech constitution and press law. But Czech lawmakers included an exception in the law, saying that journalists cannot protect their source in the case of personal information leakage.
In this respect two former policemen stand accused of violating Weigl's and Šlouf's privacy by leaking the footage to the media.
"We can speculate here that referring to this exception served a purpose to get information from Slonková," said Slonková's lawyer Karel Brückler.
Syndicate protesting
Czech Syndicate of Journalists criticized the court's ruling. "Evidently, the police is trying to abuse the press freedom law which guarantees journalists their source protection," Syndicate's head Miroslav Jelínek has said recently.
"Of course, we will pay the fine for Sabina," said Aktuálně.cz editor-in-chief Petr Závozda.
Slonková and her lawyer are mulling to take more action. Both of them insist the ruling is not legitimate.
In an earlier dispute over journalists' right to protect their sources, the Constitutional Court ruled that police must not use journalists as a source of evidence that they are not able or willing to obtain by other means.
