In a September 5 meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic Tomáš Petříček, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) President Jamie Fly thanked the minister for a decades-long partnership with his country in support of media freedom.
During the meeting at the Foreign Ministry’s Černín Palace, the two discussed how disinformation, foreign influence, and censorship distort the media landscape and undermine access to accurate news and information. They affirmed the continued importance of RFE/RL’s work and noted several forthcoming anniversaries marking its activities, including this year’s 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and other revolutions in Eastern Europe that toppled communism in 1989, and, in 2020, the 25th anniversary of RFE/RL’s move from Munich to Prague and the 70th anniversary of its first broadcast.
Fly thanked the minister for his partnership in support of the Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship and the Jiří Dienstbier Journalism Fellowships, two programs that enable RFE/RL to train and mentor aspiring journalists from the European Union’s Eastern Partnership countries, Russia, and the Western Balkans.
RFE/RL, headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, relies on its networks of local reporters to provide accurate news and information to 34 million people in 26 languages and 22 countries where media freedom is restricted, or where a professional press has not fully developed. Its videos were viewed over 2.6 billion times on Facebook and YouTube in FY2018. RFE/RL is an editorially independent media company funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media.