On Thursday, the Czech mainstream media erupted with news of the arrest of a Chinese journalist. However, it raised more questions than answers. The journalist, who had been working in the Czech Republic for five years, wrote not only about the Czech Republic but also about all the countries of the Visegrad Group, and had an official accreditation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which the Czech state repeatedly renewed for three years in a row, wrote editor Helena Kočová.

The very fact that the case was made public immediately raised eyebrows. It was first reported by Deník N, Seznam Zprávy, Czech Radio, and other "serious" publications. However, this is where the quality of some of the Czech mainstream journalism was exposed: the concept of the presumption of innocence seemed to mean nothing to them in this case.

Categorizing the Czech Mainstream Media

While in other, even violent cases, the media use words like "man suspected of murder," in the case of the detained journalist, no one hesitated for a moment to use the labels "agent" or "spy." This is despite the fact that the investigation is still ongoing and no court decision exists.

If the detained person were truly a "secret agent" or "spy," as some media outlets readily labeled him, he would have to be charged under § 316 of the Criminal Code – espionage. This section deals with classic espionage and is one of the most serious security-related crimes. It is based on working with classified information and assumes that the perpetrator is obtaining or transmitting such information with the intent to harm the Czech Republic.

However, none of this has been officially stated in this case.

Instead, the Czech state has classified the case under a relatively new provision of § 318a of the Criminal Code – unauthorized activity for a foreign power. This section refers to individuals who "with the intent to threaten or harm the constitutional order, sovereignty, territorial integrity, defense, or security of the Czech Republic, engage in activities for a foreign power within its territory."

The difference is crucial: § 318a does not require working with classified information. It is not based on demonstrable espionage, but on the interpretation of intent and the nature of the activity. This is why this section was criticized by some experts during its approval as being too broad and open to interpretation, with the risk that its interpretation could affect even legitimate and lawful professional activities, including journalistic work based solely on publicly available sources.

Journalistic Work vs. "Activity for a Foreign Power"

And here we come to the heart of the problem. A journalist was arrested for doing what journalists typically do: working with publicly available information, conducting interviews, analyzing political and social developments. Moreover, given that he did not speak Czech, his work was often more complicated than that of local journalists, and he relied even more on official, publicly available sources. Yes, he was loyal to his country, just as Czech journalists are loyal to the Czech Republic, French journalists to France, and American journalists to the United States. Loyalty to one's country is not a crime.

And to whom are the Czech media actually loyal?

It is also a legitimate, albeit uncomfortable, question: to whom are the media loyal that have framed this case from the first day as a spy scandal?

Deník N, Seznam Zprávy, and even the public broadcaster, Czech Radio, which is funded by license fees, reported the "revelation" at a time when the new Czech government, led by a coalition of ANO, SPD, and Motorists, is openly seeking to normalize relations with China and declares an interest in pragmatic bilateral cooperation.

The project Sinopsis, which is funded by organizations such as the Independent Journalism Foundation, People in Need, and the American National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is frequently cited by experts. While NED presents itself as an independent organization, it was actually created as a project of the U.S. government and has long operated in dozens of countries around the world with the aim of influencing the media and political landscape in accordance with the interests of the United States.

BIS: Be obedient, and we'll leave you alone…

It is also important to consider who initiated this case. The operation was carried out in cooperation between the Czech Intelligence Service (BIS), led by Michal Koudelka, and the Czech police's National Center for Counter-Terrorism, Extremism, and Cybercrime. The very act of targeting the journalist was an explicit action – stopping the vehicle, placing explosives under the car, police officers in full riot gear pulling the suspect out of the car as if he were a dangerous terrorist – all of this was, of course, intended to be part of a media spectacle on television news. I will leave it to others to assess why Koudelka launched the operation now and what he was trying to achieve.

In fact, our entire counterintelligence agency is a rather peculiar entity. On its website, BIS reassures citizens with the words: "If you are not a terrorist or a spy, if you do not threaten the democratic system, the security, and the economic interests of the state, if you do not disclose classified information, if you are not involved in organized crime, or if you are not in contact with people who have a guilty conscience in these areas, you should not be concerned about our interest in your person."

This sentence is intended to be reassuring. But simply by replacing a single word – "democratic" – with "monarchist" or "socialist," we immediately find ourselves in a vocabulary that Europe knows very well from the past.

Such formulations are typical of systems that are least certain of their legitimacy. And this raises a troubling question: where does the protection of democracy end, and where does its linguistic and intellectual emptiness begin? And who determines what exactly constitutes a "threat to the democratic system," especially when the work of an accredited journalist can also fall into this category?

What does the world think?

Many journalists, especially those with a social conscience, repeatedly write about journalists who have paid the highest price for their work. They write about reporters who have been killed in the line of duty, about those who have ended up in prison simply because they reported on events that someone did not want to see made public, or because of their opposing political views. According to international organizations, hundreds of journalists are imprisoned every year, and dozens pay for their work with their lives. Not because they are terrorists. But because they wrote, asked questions, and reported.

These cases are regularly cited as violations of freedom of the press, abuse of security forces, and erosion of democracy. The Czech Republic has long joined these critics. This makes it all the more concerning when it itself begins to use the same language, the same methods, and the same logic.

The arrest of an accredited foreign journalist, the media labeling even before a trial, vague security charges, and language such as "if you don't threaten the system, you don't have to be afraid" – these are precisely the characteristics that we have previously seen elsewhere and condemned with a sense of moral superiority.

The issue isn't whether a state has the right to protect its security. It's about *how* it does so—and who it is willing to sacrifice in the process. Freedom of the press is not measured by how a state treats journalists who are ideologically aligned or politically convenient. It is judged by how it treats those who are different, inconvenient, and easily expendable. If the Czech Republic begins to behave in a way that allows the work of a journalist to be labeled as a security threat without clear evidence, then it is dangerously approaching countries from which it has previously sought to distance itself. The question then becomes not whether the detained journalist was guilty, but rather how far we have actually progressed—and whether we are even aware of it. CMG