7/11/2022
Keep Doors Shut for Evil
One of the most popular Czech investigative journalists has been on our TV screens for 16 years. He has a unique style of revealing the vicious tricks played on tourists in Prague and other towns. He is even more enthusiastic about his Honest Guide / Kluci z Prahy project which discovers lesser known and remarkable places.
Janek Rubeš
Reporter, documentarist, director and moderator, Janek Rubeš is most famous for his investigative documentaries about common scams in Prague and other Czech towns. His videos in Czech are available on his Kluci z Prahy YouTube channel, which is followed by 430 thousand users, English videos are published by the Honest Guide profile with more than 1,1 million followers.
Is it not a sort of Sisyphean work. You might ruin one fraudulent exchange office, but another will open a few metres away?
It is not. My former colleague, a legend of journalism, Josef Klíma once told me that we have to do our best to keep the doors shut when evil is trying to get in. If we let go, fraudsters would have the playfield to themselves. Of course, some slip out, but that is to be expected. The work still makes sense.
What are your plans for the following weeks? What will you do?
I cannot wait for our planned journey to Krakow. We were invited to cover their excellent music festival, but of course, we do our own research to show our audience also other interesting things. Then we plan a trip to Lužické Hory. And you can rely on our regular episodes about the kinds of fraud we have just talked about.
What is it like to go to work every morning knowing that you might be attacked while you work?
It never happens. Some of the people whose tricks we disclose in our videos threaten us, but they have never done any harm.
So, are there any places in Prague where you would be afraid to go and work?
No. I think that Prague is really a safe city, nobody should be afraid to go anywhere.
It never happens. Some of the people whose tricks we disclose in our videos threaten us, but they have never done any harm.
What do you consider your major professional success?
Having such a great team with Honza Mikulka. He takes care of the operations of our “company”, and I roam the city and look for new topics. This gives me incredible creative freedom which lets me reach out much further than if we worked for a media outlet. But you probably wanted something like making an exchange office close down or something, didn’t you?
Text: Petr Manuel Ulrych
The article is to be find in magazine of Leo Express
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