Czech Republic
In the last year, the Czech media landscape reflected both economic recovery and mounting technological pressures. While some sectors experienced growth and further ownership consolidation, both legacy and digital publishers struggled with the disruptive impact of AI on online traffic. Meanwhile, the change in government renewed uncertainty about the future of public service media.
The Czech economy grew by 2.6% in 2025, slightly outpacing inflation (2.5%) and making it one of the faster-growing economies in the EU. While this benefited major broadcasters and streaming platforms, newspaper publishers continued to face structural challenges, including declining circulation (-9.6% year-on-year) and subscriptions (-8.3%). Publishers’ ability to monetise online content has been further undermined by the rapid development of AI, particularly in online search. An analysis by the Association for Internet Development (SPIR) has shown that the rise of AI is significantly reducing traffic to Czech websites by providing users with answers directly in search results rather than directing them to original sources.1 This trend accelerated following the introduction of Google’s AI Overviews in the Czech market in May 2025. According to SPIR, news has not yet been affected, with the greatest impact seen in areas such as lifestyle, hobby, or advice sites, where traffic declines year-on-year approach 65%.
At the same time, Czech publishers have been seeking to strengthen their position vis-à-vis global digital platforms. These efforts gained new momentum in March 2025, when the Ministry of Culture authorised the Publishers’ Licensing Rights Administrator (SLPV), representing the main market players, to negotiate licensing agreements with platforms such as Google and Meta. Negotiations were reportedly conducted with Microsoft and the major domestic online player Seznam in 2025; however, neither Google nor Meta had entered formal negotiations by the end of the year.2
The Czech streaming market underwent further consolidation with the launch of Oneplay, a new platform created through the merger of the pay-TV service O2 TV and the video-on-demand platform Voyo, both owned by the Czech financial and telecommunications group PPF. With around 1.5m subscribers, the service immediately became the market leader.
A very significant ownership change occurred in 2025 when a 50% stake in Mafra was acquired by Czech industrialist Pavel Tykač. Mafra, one of the biggest Czech media companies (publishing news brands including MF Dnes and Lidove noviny), had been owned by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš for a decade from 2013. The transaction highlights the continued concentration of Czech media ownership in the hands of powerful economic elites, whose rationales for investing often extend beyond purely commercial considerations. This view seems to be shared by the public, with this year’s DNR data reporting that 77% of Czech respondents believe that media owners influence news coverage. Tykač’s own public remarks – describing the acquisition as a ‘purely defence mechanism’ and an attempt to prevent the publisher from ‘turning into a leftist medium’ – have done little to reassure observers about the future editorial independence of Mafra.3
While the adoption of legislation implementing key European media frameworks – particularly the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) – has been further delayed, several new self-regulatory initiatives have emerged. A coalition of leading Czech news organisations and journalistic associations has adopted a ten-point self-regulatory code aimed at strengthening transparency, editorial autonomy, and adherence to shared ethical standards. This initiative responds to the EMFA’s requirements for the development of effective co- or self-regulatory mechanisms governing editorial standards and safeguarding editorial independence of media service providers.
Beyond mainstream media, the community of digital content creators – YouTubers, podcasters, and other online influencers – has also become increasingly active. In 2025, they established not one but two professional associations, highlighting both the growing importance of this segment and the rising recognition of the need for clearer standards and forms of self-regulation.
The outcome of the October 2025 parliamentary elections is impacting the prospects for public service media (PSM). Although the licence fee was increased as recently as May 2025 – after two decades of stagnation – the new government coalition, composed of populist and far-right parties, has proposed a bill which aims to replace it with direct state funding from 2027. While the new model ties the funding to inflation, the initial allocation for both PSM institutions has been reduced significantly, threatening their financial sustainability and raising concerns about increased dependence on the government. Combined with sustained verbal attacks by government representatives on individual journalists, particularly those at Czech Television, this has created unprecedented uncertainty about the future independence of public service media.
Václav Štětka
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Changing media
The use of TV and social media as sources of news has stabilised, while print continues to fall. Online remains dominant, though still below its peak in the previous decade, indicating an overall decline in weekly news use.
Pay for online news
13%
(-)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
41%
(+4)
Trust in news overall
31%
(-2)
Global average: 37%
Since 2023 trust in news has remained relatively low at around 30–33%. There were no significant changes in trust in individual news brands this year. Public service broadcasters remain the most trusted brands, despite increasing attempts by various political actors to undermine their credibility.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
11/180
Score 83.01
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
Footnotes
1 https://www.spir.cz/ai-poskozuje-vydavatele-spir-hlasi-propady-navstevnosti-u-kategorii-servisniho-a-zajmoveho-obsahu/
2 https://www.lupa.cz/aktuality/cesti-vydavatele-maji-dalsi-firmu-ktera-bude-platit-za-jejich-obsah-online/
3 https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-zivot-v-cesku-je-to-ciste-obranny-mechanismus-tykac-poprve-vysvetlil-proc-koupil-mafru-292578