Michal Kubal

* 1976

  • "We agreed because there was a big problem that there were two roads. Either by plane or by car, knowing that the day before we knew that our colleagues had passed through to Amman without much trouble. Whereas the road to the airport, it was said at the time to be the most dangerous road in the world. There were attacks every day, mines planted every day, explosive systems planted every day. There were car bombings, ambushes and stuff. So we said we'd go the way we came. We rented a car through an official agency and Vitek Pohanka from the radio joined us. So we left in the morning, and I normally announced that we were going to go, that we were going on the road to Prague. And we drove and then I just remember that the driver made a strange turn and suddenly there was a roadblock in front of us and there were armed men standing there, wearing bandanas, holding Kalashnikovs and Erpegs. So they told him to go to them, so he did, and they pulled us out of there, and that's how the kidnapping actually started."

  • "The way it usually works is that the parents come in and make a living in some way. And they do the worst job, but even the worst job in that Western society is just something else and it's much better than life in the original countries. Then the second generation comes in that was born there - and suddenly they're comparing themselves to their peers. And of course there's racism towards people from other countries, other parts of the city and so on. And this all comes together when these people are living in a country they have no relationship to, at the same time most of them are raised by mothers who watch Arabic TV. So it creates a relationship with a dream culture, which of course in real life looks very different than what the TV shows then. And into that sometimes comes the uprooting from that society, coupled with the appearance of identity that comes either from some radical clerics or comes through the internet. So all these things come together and then there is no need for a training camp, then it just takes a few people, or even one single person, who was the Vienna attacker for example, and all it takes is for this one person to be radicalized, to get a gun in his hand and then it's done."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 29.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:51:52
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 31.08.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:18:34
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
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At some point you have to choose between adrenaline and family.

Michal Kubal, Prague, 2021
Michal Kubal, Prague, 2021
zdroj: PB Prague

Michal Kubal was born on 12 October 1976 in the small town Stod in western Bohemia, the youngest of three children. He graduated from the grammar school in Pilsen and was subsequently accepted to the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. In 1997, while studying at university, he began working part-time as a short news editor at Czech Television. In 1998 he accepted an offer to move to the foreign desk of Czech Television and shortly afterwards went to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a war correspondent. In 1999 he worked as a correspondent in Macedonia. After the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001, he went to Afghanistan and saw first-hand the American attacks on Kabul. In 2003, he witnessed first-hand the fall of Saddam Hussein‘s regime and the toppling of his statue in Baghdad. He became head of the foreign desk. On 11 April 2004, he was kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq with cameraman Petr Klíma and Czech Radio editor Vít Pohanka. They were released on 16 April 2004. From 2008 to 2012 he worked as a foreign correspondent for Czech Television in Washington. In 2013, he became the head of the Czech Television‘s foreign desk again. Since 2016, he has worked as a presenter of the main Czech Television news programme Události. He has covered war conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. He is the recipient of the Ferdinand Peroutka Award (2003) and the Journalist‘s Quail Award (2002). In 2021, he lived in the Central Bohemian village of Vrchotovy Janovice.