"The freedom of press in the Czech Republic is very high," says Marc Gruber, the acting director of the Press Center in Brussels, which is a section of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. "Like other countries in Central Europe, the Czech Republic has integrated well into the European Union."

The group ranked the Czech Republic in ninth place in its annual press freedom survey this year. The United States, by contrast, slipped all the way down to 44th place.

But Czech media observers are warning that some recent developments — a proposed privacy law amendment, an increase in self-censorship and centralized media ownership — could threaten gains made since the 1989 revolution.

One of those concerned is Miroslav Jelínek, chairman of the Czech Journalists' Syndicate and a reporter for the daily Hospodářské noviny. He says he wasn't surprised that the Czech Republic fared so well in the survey. "I think the situation here is very good," he says.

He cites lack of censorship and a functioning Free Access to Information law. This law covers the state agencies and public institutions that manage public funds as well as those institutions that make legal decisions.

Disturbing trends

But Jelínek warns press freedom here could suffer a sharp blow. A proposed privacy law amendment, which has just passed its second reading, would make it unlawful to record anyone without prior consent, including on hidden cameras, with penalties of up to one year in jail for violators.

"It's disturbing," says Jelínek. "I think it will have a very negative impact on investigative journalism."

Another problem, according to Jelínek, is the attitude of Czech politicians to the media. "They sometimes still fail to realize that without the press, they're nothing," says Jelínek.

Czech politicians are fond of suing newspapers for defamation whenever they read something about themselves they don't like. The country's defamation law says people found guilty could face up to two years in jail. Reporters Without Borders has criticized the Czech Republic in the past for this law.

Media experts also point to other recent developments that could threaten press freedom, namely the pressures that come with corporate media ownership. "When it comes to being independent from the state, the Czech press is very free," says Jan Jirák, a media studies professor at Charles University. "But within individual media outlets, the freedom is limited. It's being dictated by commercialism."

Josef Benda, a lawyer who specializes in media law, agrees. "There is a lot of self-censorship going on in many of the local papers," he says. "Publishers, who are above all interested in making profit, often influence editorial content to a degree. So do some of the advertisers, such as ČEZ [the biggest Czech power company], who place expensive ads in the papers."

According to Benda, part of the problem is that in the Czech Republic only a handful of publishers own most of the media outlets. For instance, the Vltava-Labe-Press, which is part of German publisher Passauer Neue Presse, owns a big proportion of the country's regional papers — 72 dailies and 28 weeklies.

This, Benda points out, isn't something specific to the Czech Republic. It's a worldwide trend that he says makes it all the more worrisome.

But press freedom surveys usually do not take into account self-censorship. Gruber of the Press Center admits that surveys of this sort only give a small indication about a given country's press freedom.

What's more, every organization will have slightly different results by virtue of using different criteria. The Freedom House Press Survey for 2005, for instance, placed the Czech Republic 49th — 20 places behind the United States, which placed 29th.

The United States' surprisingly low position, Gruber notes, has a lot to do with the incident involving Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who served 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal one of her sources.

Gruber worries about the freedom of press in the United States, which, he says, has suffered a lot as a result of the ongoing war on terrorism, during which government institutions are demanding greater access to private information.

"This is a very worrying trend, and we are seeing a similar threat in Europe," he says. In Brussels, for instance, there has been a proposal to keep all telecommunications data on file for three years, he says. And in Great Britain, authorities may start tracking e-mails.

Does this mean that press freedom around the world is declining?