Relationship of CZSO to Media

The mission of statistics is to maintain, expand and increase the society knowledge about economic, social and ecological phenomena and processes. One of the most important goals of the Czech Statistical Office is to ensure the impartiality and the independence of all released data. In order to be trusted by the public and politicians, statistics must be presented in a clear and a transparent way. Therefore the collaboration with Media is essential.


Connection to Media ( press agencies, newspaper, periodicals, televisions, radio stations, internet portals, and so on) in the Czech Statistical Office is organized by the Information Services Department and the Electronic Presentation Department (Marketing Unit).

Contact to media can be divided according to the role which the CZSO has:
·active
-news and press releases
-press conferences
-internet presentation
-newspaper reports
·passive
-answering their statistical inquiries
-compilation of statistical figures into the required form
-publications in electronic or written form
-possibility to obtain statistical data via FTP/SCP etc.

All these services are free of charge.

The dissemination of the news releases can demonstrate the impartiality and the independence of the CZSO.

The News Releases are very important and sensitive statistical data published according to the calendar published in adequate advance and also at the exact time (9,00 a.m.). Such a calendar enhances statistical service a level higher, depending on how early the calendar is announced and how precise the released data are. The CZSO announces the dates of releasing sensitive data for the following year in September.

Decisive for the news release being interesting for professionals and attractive for journalists is the selection of topics and indicators included in the news release. The topics should be interesting not only for the statisticians and economists, but also for the public. Such topics certainly include GDP (gross domestic product), inflation, trends in industry and construction, wages, retail trade, external trade,...

The News Release must include a name corresponding to the calendar and a headline (for example "The biggest rise in prices for the last three years"). We try to write the headline in the way attractive for journalists to enable them to use it in their articles, to develop it, add other non-statistical information, etc. The news must have clearly defined paragraphs, the first one summarizing and the other paragraphs developing on the individual pieces of information.It should include a simple table of main data and a graph showing the trend (if it is suitable).The releases are published both in the Czech and English versions and their length usually does not exceed one or two pages (exceptionally three).

The information includes also the contact to relevant persons or press (or dissemination) department staff members who must be ready to give further or additional information.

The press conferences are held irregularly - for example on the occasion of annual GDP data publishing. Some press conferences were organized also in connection with the Population Census (some of them were planned, or were rather of the promotional character, another were held as the reaction to the press attacks).