Final Word from Tuesday, April 6, 2021

No one in Czech politics gets such an easy ride from the media as Chief Justice Pavel Rychetský of the Constitutional Court. He uses his occasional media appearances to make broad, judgemental statements about politics and society, often overstepping in the process the bounds of what a justice should say in public. Yet he is rarely challenged to back up these broad, judgemental statements. He is essentially an opposition politician who is given an open mike. A regular opposition politician or journalist can get away with saying that the CR is worst in covid, as Rychetský did on Sun. on TV Prima, but a person of his official position demeans his own institution and the Constitution he has vowed to uphold by throwing around such "subjective impressions," to use his own term for the comments he was making. Our subjective impression is that if the media treated him like the opposition leader he is, he would make fewer media appearances and serve the country better. [ Czech Republic judgmental microphone world globally ]