Final Word from Wednesday, November 23, 2011
A nasty battle is playing itself out between Zdeněk Bakala'sEconomia publishing house and Jaromír Soukup's Médea mediaagency. It all started in 2008 when lawyer Radek Pokorný,who is on Economia's supervisory board, put the antitrust officeon the trail of Médea and OMD for collusion. Médea respondedby directing advertisers away from Economia. Then,this month, Economia's HN broke the news that Petr Nečaswants to cut Soukup's agency off from handling the mediabuyingaccounts of state-owned firms such as ČEZ and ČSA.Soukup's Týden reacted last week by accusing Pokorný and ex-GM Michal Klíma of Economia of advising Nečas to do this sothey could get their hands on Kč 2bn in EU ad spending. Economia'sRespekt responded this week by saying that Soukup isviolating unwritten rules by owning both a media agency andmedia outlets. Years ago, Bakala said that everyone in the smallCR has conflicts of interest, and that just about sums up the realityof both sides in the battle between Economia and Médea.
Glossary of difficult words
to put someone on the trail - to alert someone to something;
to break the news/a story - to be the first one to report something;
to sum up - to give a brief summary of something.