Czech News Agency
national public service news agency in the Czech Republic
The Czech News Agency (Czech: Česká tisková kancelář), abbreviated to ČTK, is a national public service news agency in the Czech Republic. It provides its services in Czech and English.
History
ČTK was founded on 28 October 1918, on the same day as Czechoslovakia, as Czechoslovak News Agency. It was formed from several unofficial Czech press agencies, which until then functioned in exile. It published in several languages, including in German together with then-official Czechoslovak.
The agency remained throughout both the Nazi and Communist regimes, however, its reporting was highly censored and it served the regimes' needs.
As modern ČTK
Following the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the government lost its power to interfere in editorial decisions. In 1993, the government relinquished control of the agency, which has since been managed by its CEO in his sole responsibility.
Following the Velvet divorce, the agency split into the Czech Press Agency, which kept using the ČTK branding, and a newly created News Agency of the Slovak Republic, also known as TASR.
Today, the lower house of Czech Parliament elects a ČTK Council, composed of seven members with limited oversight responsibilities. Members of the board are not allowed to be politically active.
The public source identifies “Czech News Agency” as national public service news agency in the Czech Republic. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Czech, News and Agency.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q341118. VIAF identifies the subject as 160778565. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1989 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Czech News Agency” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.