MEDIA-SLOVAKIA: Ownership Raises Freedom Issues

By Pavol Stracansky Reprint | | Print |

Pavol Stracansky

BRATISLAVA, Nov 8 2005 (IPS) - The new owners of Slovakia’s most popular television station have pledged more objective news after years of complaints that its founder and former minister Pavol Rusko used it as a vehicle for himself and his political party.

The U.S. firm Central European Media Enterprises (CME) took over TV Markiza last week in a reported 28.7 million dollar deal which saw Rusko sell a controlling share in the company.

Officials at CME said soon after the purchase was announced that it wanted to ensure the station’s news was objective – a move widely seen as accepting repeated complaints by the Slovak Broadcasting Council about a bias in Markiza’s news towards Rusko’s New Citizen’s Alliance (ANO) party.

The move was also welcomed by independent media watchdogs, who said it would not only rid the station of bias but make viewers more aware how news was presented to them.

“This is a good step by CME in that they appear to want to raise the objectiveness in Markiza’s news. This can only be a good thing for viewers and for television news in general,” Ivan Godarsky from the media monitoring organisation MEMO 98 told IPS.

“This will also help Slovaks to understand that not all news might be completely objective. Sometimes people here just take news as being completely 100 per cent (objective and correct) and do not ask any questions about it. Now they will be more aware,” he added.

Rusko was one of the founders of Markiza, which began broadcasting in 1996 as Slovakia’s first private TV station. It rapidly became the most popular TV channel, with viewing figures far outnumbering the public STV station’s two channels.

But since Rusko founded the ANO party in 2001, and more prominently since ANO became part of the coalition government after the 2002 parliamentary elections, Markiza faced growing criticism of a bias in its news towards Rusko and ANO.

Groups like MEMO 98 have produced reports highlighting that ANO was repeatedly given greater airtime in news reports than other political parties, and that news spots on other political parties were unbalanced.

Rusko sold his shares in Markiza in 2002 but it was widely thought he still had massive influence over the station, and its news coverage in particular.

His close friendship with the station’s two top political reporters, Daniel Krajcer and Zlatica Puskarova, was well publicized. This summer Rusko and Puskarova went on holiday together.

Critics asked how such reporters could remain completely impartial in their reporting on Rusko and ANO. The latest complaint about Markiza’s news being investigated by the Broadcasting Council concerned a report by Krajcer in September on a faction challenging Rusko’s leadership of the ANO party, in which Rusko was given significantly more airtime than anyone else.

The Christian Democrat (KDH) party boycotted the station citing what it called attacks on the party by the station, and smear campaigns against its leaders.

The Broadcasting Council issued a number of fines and warnings to Markiza over its news coverage. In the last three years it forced the station on 17 occasions to run an information spot telling viewers about its findings.

Members of the Broadcasting Council have said they had also considered ordering a temporary halt to Markiza’s news broadcasts because of the number of complaints.

Markiza’s licence expires in 2007 and the station will have to apply to extend it early next year.

Following the announcement of the CME takeover, Slovak media speculated that CME had put pressure on Rusko to sell his share in the company over speculation that the station’s licence may not be extended by the Broadcasting Council.

CME officials have not responded to the speculation but general manager Michael Garin said in a statement after the takeover that the company was “pleased that it is gaining control of Markiza before the (request for) extension of its licence next year.”

CME’s news plans, which include the introduction of a standards manual for the news department, were welcomed by many politicians, including senior KDH members. They suggested the party’s boycott of the station could soon end.

“Overall it is a very good step and the biggest improvement is that the connection with Mr Rusko will have been severed,” Godarsky of MEMO 98 told IPS.

“We were lucky that there was news on other Slovak channels where there was an opportunity for political parties to be objectively presented to viewers. Now that opportunity has become even greater,” he added.