For the past 18 years, viewers of Czech TV could count on a journalistic program every Sunday evening 168 hours with moderator Nora Fridrichová. But that will no longer apply after this year’s holidays. The CEO of ČT Jan Souček agreed with the news and program management that the program 168 Hours is ending.
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Marek Wollner and Nora Fridrichová used to be one of the main faces of CT news programs. Today Wollner is gone from ČT, he settled in Pavel Šafra’s Forum 24 newspaper. Nora Fridrichová remains on television, but her program 168 hours will no longer be shown on the screens of public television. “Even the events of the last few days contributed to the final decision to end the production of the program 168 hours, which unfortunately also affects the program, and which not only damages the program itself, but also does not put Czech Television in a good light,” said CT CEO Jan Souček. “The television management believes that the creators of 168 hours will continue to stay at Czech Television, they want to use their long-term experience. Moderator Nora Fridrichová will be offered to participate in new journalistic formats,” added Souček.
“In most cases, it was a matter of not providing sufficient or even no space for the expression of opposing parties, opposing expert opinions or the necessary context,” stated then in a letter to the Council of Czech Television Souček. Souček also objected to the fact that the communication between former editor Mark Wollner and Nora Fridrichová, which contained vulgar words and connotations, was published to the media.
Nora Fridrichová kept silent about the storm on Czech TV for several days because she is on vacation. But now she finally spoke.
“Yesterday my daughters asked me what will happen to me. I found out that I no longer have my current job and that even my team does not know what they will be doing from next month, right before I left for vacation with the children. I absolutely didn’t expect it and it wasn’t the most pleasant departure,” she described the moment she learned about the end of the 168 hours show. That is, at the moment of the beginning of the vacation and when going abroad with the children.
“I’m in places without a signal and scraps of accusations that we at 168h are criminals and that our work suddenly doesn’t belong on public television have started to arrive,” Fridrichová wrote on the X network and added why the show was terminated. “Do you know what I should have done to break the law? For example, with the sentence that the mafia once came to power in Slovakia with Robert Fic,” she wrote.
Fridrichová connected Robert Fico and the shooting of journalist Ján Kuciak in the program 168 hours in February 2023, she said that Fico’s return would mean linking the state with the mafia. “This is happening five years after the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová, when mass civil protests resulted in the downfall of Fico, who -? as Prime Minister –? symbolized the connection between the mafia and the state,” was heard in the program.
In the report, Nora Fridrichová let the survivors of journalist Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kušnírová speak. “The last five years? “Sadness, grief, pain and maybe even anger towards what happens after their death,” assessed Zlatica Kušnírová five years after her daughter’s murder. “At the beginning, the protests in the squares looked promising. People seem to wake up and start thinking for themselves, not under the influence of some false information and hoaxes. Unfortunately, it’s back now, and I think in a much worse form.”
“I can say that there are quite a few people left who are still determined to fight for a decent republic and a decent Slovakia. But many people gave up,” said Jozef and Mária Kuciak, parents of the murdered journalist, in the report.
“He is fighting for power, but his potential return will be the return of a completely different politician who we have had the opportunity to follow for years,” sociologist Michal Vašečka from the Bratislava Policy Institute commented for the 168 hours Fica program. “And it is a fact that the trends say that a return is not completely out of the question.”
Fridrichová also invited Pavla Holcová from the Investigace website and Peter Bárdy, editor-in-chief of the Aktuality.cz website, to the report. Both evaluated Robert Fico very strictly, they did not leave a thread dry on him, as they say. Robert Fico didn’t have a single “defender” in his reportage. The report therefore sounded only against the then chairman of SMER and the current prime minister of the Slovak Republic.
But Nora Fridrichová continued her own defense on the X social network. “They say I expressed myself in an ‘unclear way’ and thus against the law,” she evaluated the case of the report on Fico. And she went on to list why, according to her, her show was pulled. “Or that we could have broken the law, for example, by not finding an expert with a critical attitude for another report. And you know why not? Because in reality no one like that exists,” revealed Fridrichová.
According to Fridrichová, this is the reality. “For such is the true nature of our alleged sins, which are now to justify a stop sign to the politicians of a critical show,” she virtually sighed on the X network.
And what did she say to her colleagues? She had nothing to do. “When I hurriedly called my colleagues to tell them what had happened, it was frustrating for me that I had nothing to offer them. But I told my little daughters that nothing is wrong, that this just happens to journalists sometimes. It is actually a picturesque irony of fate. We broadcast so often about fellow journalists in Slovakia that we ended up like this ourselves,” Nora Fridrichová concluded her statement at the end of the 168 program.
Yesterday my daughters asked me what will happen to me. I learned that I no longer have my current job and that even my team does not know what they will be doing from next month, just before leaving for vacation with the children. I absolutely did not expect it and to be honest it was not the most pleasant departure. pic.twitter.com/8x2LTUJLIQ
— Nora Fridrichova (@NoraFridrichova) August 4, 2024
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