Jan Machacek

is a journalist and a musician currently working as a commentator for the daily newspaper Hospodarske noviny, to which he also occasionally contributes articles and interviews. He also serves as a board member of Transparency International in the Czech Republic. Previously, he lectured on Politics and the Economics of Transformation at at the Anglo American college in Prague. During communism in the 1980s, Macháček was involved in underground culture and samizdat publishing. He was a member of the famous underground music band The Plastic People of the Universe as a guitar player and later joined the band Garage, which he still plays with. In the 1980s, he signed Charter 77 and was involved in various oppositon activities. He studied at the Prague School of Economics in the first half of the 1980s, but due to political reasons did not finish.

After the revolution in 1989, Macháček joined together people from underground publishing to create the first independent media outlet in the country, the weekly Respekt (originally titled Information Service). There, he was frequently awarded for both his investigative and analytical writing. In 2000, he effectively became Respekt's deputy editor in chief. Additionally, Macháček has also been a fellow of the National Forum Foundation in Washington the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.