Bratislava, Budapest and Prague, 12 and 13 February 2009 – Three years after the release of monitoring reports on television in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, new update reports are released on 12 and 13 February at events in Bratislava and Prague. The Slovak update report highlights that notwithstanding some progress, Slovakia's old problems remain intractable.
Since the 2006 parliamentary elections, political interference with the Slovak media has increased. Leading politicians, from the Prime Minister down, have created an atmosphere of hostility, blaming the media for alleged bias and lack of professionalism, boycotting “oppositional” outlets, and adopting restrictive legislation against journalists. In early 2008, President Ivan Gašparovič even said that the Government and Parliament should have their own media.
The public service media continue to be highly politicised. Broad public debate about their role has been lacking. Slovak Television (STV, Slovenská televízia) has passed another turbulent period and its inability to resist repeated political attacks on its editorial independence harmed its overall credibility and weakened its market position. When its finances took a plunge in 2007, it became dependent on government subsidies.
The financial crisis hit the station again in early 2009, prompting its management to ask again the government for state subsidies. If it doesn’t receive them, the station wants to cancel its third channel, sack a third of its staff, drastically reduce the broadcasting time on its second channel and use mostly reruns to fill the schedules.
Progress has however also been made. Under a new legislation, public service broadcasters can collect the licence fee from all users of electricity. Although this arrangement is controversial, it is expected to boost revenue from the fee. Local broadcasters who produce public service-type programs still need access to public funds.
The commercial sector has become more transparent, marking another step in the normalization of the media market. The nationwide private broadcasters have consolidated their market positions, creating a solid sector. Yet constraints on cross-ownership continue to be easily bypassed with the Broadcasting Council making public only the names of licence holders, but not publishing the exact shareholding behind these companies as well as the owners of affiliate companies.
Although the media in general have started to show more respect for ethical codes and principles, they still have not made significant progress in professional terms: plagiarism, a refusal to make corrections, and hidden conflicts of interests are still relatively frequent. In addition, there appears to be almost no solidarity amongst journalists which naturally weakens their ability to resist repeated political attacks and also lowers respect for the profession in the society.
Slovakia is meanwhile awakening to the digital age. Better-resourced media outlets have scrambled to get a presence on new platforms. Yet a new law on digital broadcasting, adopted in March 2007, looks likely to postpone the real introduction of digital terrestrial broadcasting by several years, possibly until 2011. The government and regulator need to speed up related activities in order to incentivize commercial broadcasters to embrace new technology.
The most worrying legal development was the April 2008 adoption of a controversial press law which has potential to reduce the media freedom. International organisations, the media themselves, professional associations and non-governmental organizations all criticised the draft law – in vain.
The report calls on Slovak politicians to stop attacking and interfering with the work of the media. The custom of appointing political nominees to the councils that oversee the public service broadcasters should end. The technical regulator, the Telecommunications Office of the Slovak Republic (TÚ SR, Telekomunikačný úrad SR), should prevent the formation of monopolies on the digital multiplexes. And the Press Act should be revised in line with the recommendations of international and domestic media freedom organisations.
Note to Editors
This report is part of the monitoring series, “Television across Europe: Follow-up Reports 2008”. The series updates the analysis in nine of the twenty countries that were covered in the 2005 series of reports, “Television across Europe: regulation, policy and independence”: Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Both series of reports were produced by the EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program (EUMAP) of the Open Society Institute and the Media Program of the Open Society Foundation, in cooperation with local experts and civil society organisations. The full text of all the reports, as well as a European overview, is available in English and in translation at
http://www.mediapolicy.org.
The Slovak 2008 report, as well as the 2005 report, were drafted by Rasto Kuzel and Ivan Godarsky of MEMO 98, Slovak-based media watch-dog NGO. Reports on Slovakia and on the Czech Republic together with press releases and additional information are also available at
www.memo98.sk
Links to full reports:
in Slovak and
in English.
The report is available online at
http://www.mediapolicy.org and
http://www.memo98.sk.
For further information contact:
Rasťo Kužel at
kuzel@memo98.sk (+421 905 493 591) or Ivan Godársky at
ivang@memo98.sk (+421 905 895 304) or Miriam Anati at
manati@osieurope.org
