Britské listy

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Please improve this article if you can. (May 2007)

Britské listy is an independent Czech left-wing Internet daily, headed by Jan Čulík.

It is published by a non-governmental organisation (Czech: Občanské sdružení Britské listy, OSBL) based in Prague. Britské listy was founded in July 1996 as a spin-off of an older Internet daily (Czech: Neviditelný pes, litteral translation Invisible Dog) by Czech born Jan Čulík, Senior Lecturer in Czech Studies at the University of Glasgow.

, frequently visits the Czech Republic and works with a team of collaborators who live in the Czech Republic. He was working as a freelancer for a number of Czech-language media outlets (including the Czech Service of the BBC and of Radio Free Europe from the late 1980s onwards) and then for post-communist media in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic after the fall of communism since 1989.

The founder considers blisty to be investigative Czech-language Internet daily Britské listy.

As examples below show, it is a muckraking daily, which ranges from investigative articles to translations and transscription of conspiracy theories to character assassination diatribes. It can also be considered a thinlu moderated bulletin board, which does not has resources to verify the sources of submmited contribution.

Main contributor, by far, is Czech journalist, Stepan Kotrba,

http://blisty.cz/aut/2/bio.html with over 1500 contributions at the end of year 2007.

The Editing is responsibility of the editor-in-chief, Dr Čulik = the founder.

Biography of the founder in Czech: http://www.blisty.cz/aut/3/bio.html Biography of the founder in English: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/staff/janculik.htm

Here is automatically generated list of the most widely read articles that Britske listy http://www.blisty.cz/files/toparticles_all_0.html

Britské listy are reporting on international politics and on public debate in Czech; it has about 2000 individual contributors http://www.blisty.cz/aut/ .

According to an independent audit organization (http://www.iaudit.info) Britske listy has some 12-15 000 individual readers daily, about 40 000 individual readers weekly and 130 000 - 140 000 individual readers per month.

In March 2007, the newspaper conducted online research, publishing a detailed questionnaire asking readers to identify themselves, their income and their social strata. 5000 individuals responded. More than 85 per cent of the readers are male, most of them are high earners, most of them have university education and most of them live in large cities. (Analysis of the responses in Czech: http://www.blisty.cz/art/33475.html) It is not clear why there are very few female readers.

Contents

[edit] Criticism

There is practically no financial back-up; the newspaper is published on a server, purchased from reader's donations and all contributors work for the newspaper for free. Since the paper does not have any paid staff, or, for instance, proof readers, there are frequent typographical errors. The newspaper, aims , but sometimes fails, to publish corrections whenever an error is discovered. It also selectively publishes criticism of the published articles and of its editorial policy and its own editors and contributors.

Some 120 readers per months contribute small financial sums to the paper regularly: it receives the equivalent of approximately 1000 US dollars per month. Information about its finances is published regularly. http://www.blisty.cz/list.rb?id=147

The paper regrets that it has no financial resources for moderating a discussion forum in order to eliminate this kind of behaviour and cannot risk lawsuits for defamation should anonymous authors publish slander.

It became a leading forum of debate for that part of population opposed to building the NMD radar base in the Czech republic.

It has become a forum for ordinary readers who are dissatisfied with various aspects of the work of the Czech media and major Czech "establishment" journalists have been occasionally forced to react (this is a piece by Václav Moravec, the presenter of Czech Television's flagship Sunday lunchtime discussion programme Otázky Václava Moravce (VM's Questions) http://www.blisty.cz/art/33137.html

[edit] Controversies

Within the political spectrum [1] of the Czech press [2] "Blisty," as it is informally known, could be grouped with the hard copy paper Právo [3] to the left of majority of Czech papers [4] .It could also be compared with the British Guardian [5] from which it translates some news articles into Czech. However, unlike the politically left-leaning papers in the Czech Republic, Blisty also publishes right-leaning articles as well as readers' criticisms of the paper.

One example of the "controversies" in which Blisty has been involved was the article [6] about conspiracy theories concerning 9/11 attack, which became was widely read (over 60 000 pageviews) and sharply criticized.

A second example was the heated disscusion [7] of the topic of US anti-ballistic missile base on the Czech territory [8], which would be part of the NMD (National Missile Defense).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Schrabal, Joe (1995-01-08). News from the Czech Republic. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  2. ^ BBC Monitoring (2004-04-09). The press in the Czech Republic. BBC news. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  3. ^ Právo on-line. RÁVO, BORGIS, a.s.. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  4. ^ redakce@novinky.cz.. Novinky Denni tisk. Pravo. Seznam. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  5. ^ "[Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 Guardian]", Guardian News and Media Limited 2007, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-01-20. 
  6. ^ Bryndová, Bushka. "Pochybnosti o pozadí zářijových teroristických útoků proti USA sílí", http://www.blisty.cz, 2002-03-18. Retrieved on 2007-01-20. 
  7. ^ multiple (2006). Americká protiraketová základna v České republice. ISSN 1213-1792. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  8. ^ S Missile Defence Experts To Inspect Czech Sites For Base. SpaceDaily.AFP (2006-07-12). Retrieved on 2007-01-20.

[edit] External links