Three media pros battle to lead national news agency
The Czech News Agency is set to elect a new Director General on June 10, and on March 21, three media professionals will present their proposals. The candidates are Jaroslav Kábele, head of strategy and development at the Czech News Agency, Jan Mrzena, former Chairman of the Czech Television Council and Tomáš Pergler, a journalist for Seznam Zprávy.
The new director general will be chosen by the Czech News Agency Council right after the presentations.
Jaroslav Kábele, a veteran journalist, is currently serving as the Head of Strategy and Development at the Czech News Agency. Kábele began his journalism career as a correspondent for the then state-run agency in 1989. In 1993, he moved to the daily newspaper MF Dnes and later worked as the editor-in-chief of the news website iDnes for seven years. Kábele contributed to the search for online acquisitions for the Mafra media group from 2013 as the Head of the New Opportunities and Development Department. He returned to the Czech News Agency in 2017 to oversee its strategic projects.
Jan Mrzena, a former theatre director in South Bohemia, previously served as the Chairman of the Czech Television Council from 2001 to 2005. In 2007, Mrzena was appointed as the Director of Human Resources at the public broadcaster, Czech Television, by Jiří Janeček, who had been elected to head the broadcaster in 2003. Mrzena subsequently became the Director of ČT2 in early 2011 and left Czech Television on 31 December 2011.
Tomáš Pergler, a seasoned journalist, worked as a correspondent for the Czech News Agency in Slovakia for seven years. Later, he worked as a journalist for weekly magazines Euro and Reflex and as a reporter for the daily newspaper Hospodářské noviny. Pergler is currently working as a reporter for Seznam Zprávy, one of the most popular news websites in the Czech Republic.
Founded in 1918, the Czech News Agency is a financially and economically independent public institution that generates revenue from the sale of news to clients and receives no subsidies from the state. The current director of the Czech News Agency is Jiří Majstr.
