Government-bashing in the Slovak media

It is not surprising that after a year in office Robert Fico, Slovakia’s left-wing prime minister, should attack the country’s newspapers as a self-appointed opposition that twists his words and fails to report objectively on his government’s achievements.

Honeymoons between newly elected governments and the media are usually short-lived affairs.

In the case of Fico though, the honeymoon never happened. If his relations with the writen press had not been soured before the June 2006 elections, the campaign left him with the clear conviction that they had sided with the centre-right opposition.

He then sparked a wave of media criticism when he invited the right-wing Slovak National Party (SNS) and former authoritarian prime minister, Vladimir Meciar, to join him in a government coalition that would enable him to push through his programme. Teaming up with Meciar, a former boxer known for launching physical attacks on journalists, and SNS leader Jan Slota, better known for verbal attacks and insults, such as recently labelling a female journalist "scum", was never likely to win much praise.

Matters have not been helped by the fact that the media-hostile prime minister seems to be short of sector savvy advisers, but is not lacking engaged spokespeople who believe leaving the phone ringing is the best way to answer potentially awkward questions.

Still riding high with around 40% support in opinion polls, Fico could brush off his difficulties with Slovakia’s press, but he is not doing so.

A new media law is being brewed, whose main aim is to reinforce what the govern-ment believes to be a currently ineffective right to reply. The cash-starved state television and radio broadcasters, which subsist on a mix of ad revenue, licence fees (often unpaid) and government hand-outs, have also been on notice that their job is to inform the public "objectively".

While the tone gives cause for concern, Slovkia’s media scene has moved a long way from the Meciar-era, when political pressure was exerted much more overtly (though Fico still felt within his rights to attack the state broadcaster for not covering an official visit to Italy) and the media unable to resist.

Newspapers funded to peddle Meciar’s political line have folded, leaving the market dominated by a highly competitive foreign-owned press with an eye on the bottom line. The unfortunate experience under the previous centre-right government of economy minister Pavol Rusko using ownership of the country’s most popular television broadcaster, Markiza, as a self-promotion tool has also ended, with its purchase by US millionaire Ronald Lauder’s Bermuda-based broadcasting giant CME.

With the mid-2006 purchase of the quality daily Pravda by UK-based Northcliffe International (part of the Daily Mail group), all of Slovakia’s national dailies are in foreign hands. Top selling tabloid, Novy Cas, read by around one in every four Slovaks, is part of the Swiss-based Ringier empire. SME, Pravda’s biggest rival and, probably, Fico’s biggest critic, is owned by the German-based Verlagsgruppe Passau, along with another daily, UJ Szo, which caters for the large 500,000-strong Hungarian minority.

Dailies boosted sales by 1.09% in 2006, reversing years of decline, with ad revenue up 11.0%. The booming economy, a wave of privatisations and an influx of foreign investors resulted in an overall 179% rise in ad revenues for newspapers in the preceding five years.

The main public broadcaster STV1 over the last year joined its two commercial rivals, Markiza and JOJ TV, recently bought up by Czech-Slovak investment group J&T, in a drive downmarket founded on reality shows and superstar searches in what could be interpreted as a bid to improve its third place for viewer preferences. Many Slovaks can in any case tune into broadcasts from the neighbouring Czech Republic if they don’t like the local offer.

So, for better or worse, Slovakia’s media plurality looks pretty healthy and in shape to fend off any serious attack, if Fico is unwise enough to launch one.

• Kenneth Johnstone is a freelance writer based in Prague.

It is not surprising that after a year in office Robert Fico, Slovakia’s left-wing prime minister, should attack the country’s newspapers as a self-appointed opposition that twists his words and fails to report objectively on his government’s achievements.