Analysing how law shapes journalism in Central and Eastern Europe: the case of the 2008 Slovak Press Act

This article investigates the operation of the contested reply and correction provisions of the 2008 Slovak Press Act and their influence on journalism. I argue that apart from the 'law-on-the-books', we need to examine the interactions between the media, policymakers and judges in order to explain how law shapes journalism in the public spheres of Central and Eastern European democracies. Such interactions are based on the interests and experiences of the actors and conditioned by their particular historical, structural, cultural and international contexts. Our analysis thus needs to take them all into account when assessing the role of legislation

Hierarchy of influences on transitional journalism – Corrupting relationships between political, economic and media elites

In this article, we use the hierarchy-of-influences model as a framework for examining the ways in which media owners, managers and journalists perceive the influence exerted on their work during 12-year democratic transition in Serbia. We aim to explain how factors perceived as influential at the highest system level gradually transfer and relate to the factors on the subsumed levels. Using the concepts such as corruption and the culture of corruption to interpret hierarchy between different levels of influence on transitional journalism, we argue that coupling extra-media actors at the system level can be considered corruption – understood as abuse of power for personal gain or benefit of the aligned group – which translates to all other levels of influence

History of the media in Central and Eastern Europe

This chapter discusses the recent history of the media in four former communist countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland) in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on the transfer of media institutions and culture from “old” to “young” democracies. In line with theories of “multiple post-communisms,” it reveals major differences among these countries while also disclosing a number of similarities, including the political instrumentalization of media, party capture of public service broadcasters, partisan journalism, and excessive commercializationViešosios komunikacijos katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta