Slovak journalists fear the creeping “Orbanisation” of their country’s media as Robert Fico’s left-right populist government tightens state control over the main public broadcaster, and private television channels tone down critical coverage.

On June 30 incoming President Peter Pellegrini signed a bill to restructure the public broadcaster RTVS  into STVR [Slovak Television and Radio], a proposal that has sparked domestic and international protests since it was introduced in March. The bill became law on July 1.

Pellegrini stressed on his Facebook social media page that the bill is “not in conflict with the Constitution of the Slovak Republic and it is not an infringement on the freedom of speech”.

Pellegrini was slammed by liberal media for the speed with which he signed the bill, days after Fico’s coalition pushed it through parliament in a shortened legislative process, relying on its narrow majority of 78 out of 150 seats. 

Peter Bardy, editor-in-chief of online news outlet Aktuality.sk, wrote that the first steps of Pellegrini, who was backed by Fico during the presidential campaign, show that the former Hlas party leader is not going to be the Thomas Becket of Slovak politics and turn on his former party boss Fico, who is an open admirer of Hungarian strongman Orban.

The broadcasting bill ejects the RTVS’ long-term CEO Lubos Machaj and will give the Ministry of Culture four appointees on the new nine-member STVR governing body that will elect the new CEO. The other five members will be appointed by parliament. There will also be an ethical commission overseeing the STVR programming.

Opposition parties expect the new CEO, who has yet to be appointed, to trim the public broadcaster’s coverage to suit the ruling coalition.  They will challenge the legislation at the Constitutional Court. 

The European Commission is also likely to take action. Vera Jourova, outgoing European Commissioner for Values and Transparency, told bne IntelliNews last month that she would launch proceedings against Slovakia under the EU principle of sincere cooperation if the bill were passed.

Some of RTVS’ top journalists are already leaving. Former RTVS host Miro Frindt, who announced he was leaving the public broadcaster last month, is to become one of the leading faces of the newly set up Slovak branch of the Czech online television DVTV. He said the new online television will “present also less acceptable views”, leading daily SME reported.

RTVS “will become ‘state television’ – the term I’ve begun using in connection with the public broadcaster in Viktor Orban’s Hungary,” says Zsolt Gal, a Slovak-Hungarian political scientist at Bratislava’s Comenius University.

The potential neutering of the public broadcaster comes as Slovak commercial television stations pledge their loyalty to the new regime by scaling back investigative reporting and political coverage.

Critics argue that private owners of media such as Czech financial group PPF (owner of broadcaster Markiza), J&T (owner of broadcaster Joj), Slovak financial group Penta (owner of the News and Media group of dailies) and Czech businessman Michal Voracek (owner of broadcaster TA3) are more concerned about the value of their investments and their other business interests in the country than standing up for independent journalism and democracy.

Journalists at Markiza, the largest commercial television, announced a strike alert in May after the suspension of the country’s most popular political programme Na telo [To the bone], following an unauthorised address on air by host Michal Kovacic, who warned against the creeping “Orbanisation” of the Slovak media. Kovacic also complained about editorial interference in the show by the management of the broadcaster.

Leading intellectuals and artists addressed an open letter to the Kellner family, owners of the PPF Group, urging it to prevent the “normalisation” of Markiza. The Czech branch of the International Press Institute (CZ IPI) also addressed an open letter to Renata Kellnerova and PPF Group’s CEO Jiri Smejc at the end of May, calling for their “personal guarantees” to maintain Na telo and Kovacic in Markiza’s programming. 

Smejc told Czech media that the financial group is trying to re-establish objectivity at the broadcaster. “We just want, and we have some monitoring systems in place, for the news to be objective,” he said.

The country’s other main news broadcasters – Joj and TA3 – are much smaller than RTVS and Markiza  and had already largely given up on in-depth political news coverage, meaning that the populist government is now unlikely to be put under scrutiny on television, still the main media for most Slovaks.

Spreading disinformation

“The situation in Slovakia could in one year’s time be even worse than the one in Hungary,” says Gal, pointing out that at least Hungary still has the relatively objective RTL television of the Luxembourg-based RTL Group.

He expects the quality of the restructured public broadcaster to drop dramatically,  pointing to Hungary, where the public media lost the respect of professional journalists as well as part of its viewership after the Orban regime’s takeover. “Vulgarisation and Russian propaganda will become the norm,” he warns.

The background of new Culture Minister Martina Simkovicova, who was nominated to the cabinet by the far-right SNS party, is a particular worry. She is a former presenter at TV Slovan, a channel spreading hoaxes about the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and the war in Ukraine.

Other figures in the new government have also made a habit of appearing on disinformation channels or of spreading disinformation themselves on their social media. Fico himself has been accused of spreading disinformation about COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and climate change. 

Minister of Environment Tomas Taraba (SNS nominee) has appeared regularly on disinformation channels such as Infovojna (Infowars).  In March Minister of Interior Matus Sutaj Estok (Hlas) took part in an online debate together with Daniel Bombic, an extremist who faces extradition from the UK to face three warrants for his arrest in Slovakia, including over anti-semitism.

“We won’t move forward when the government is one of the major spreaders of disinformation,” says Eva Mihockova, an investigative journalist at Zastavme korupciu [Let’s stop corruption] NGO.

Gal predicts that in Slovakia nothing apart from “liberal electronic media with their print versions” could remain of the independent news media.

Yet Slovakia’s thriving independent newspapers such as Dennik N and Sme separate it from Hungary, where the Orban regime has destroyed the financial basis of the free press by withdrawing advertising by state bodies and companies, and then used friendly oligarchs to buy up the remaining titles and close them down or change their orientation. 

Eva Mihockova told bne Intellinews that the Slovak media “won’t be in such a bad shape” as the Hungarian one. Mihockova pointed out “the traditionally strong third sector” in the country, which she added draws on the experience of countering Vladimir Meciar, the country’s populist founder, in the 1990s. 

Mihockova says that even though the electronic liberal online outlets and their print versions have “a relatively narrow circle of readers” who keep it going, these, nevertheless, are capable of “opening important themes” with their quality reporting, which even the openly pro-government outlets won’t be able to ignore.