The Slovak prime minister's problems with journalists

The Slovak government wants to push through a new press law regardless of the loud protests against it. A final parliamentary discussion on the subject has been scheduled for today. Martin M. Šimečka, who for many years was editor-in-chief of the Slovak quality daily Sme, explains why the left-wing populist Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico, is so angry with the country's journalists: "There is practically no left-wing press in Slovakia. The current generation of journalists grew up either in the times of the battle against [the autocratic ex prime minister] Vladimir Mečiar or with the conservative ideology of the Dzurinda government. The preponderance of conservative views in the media is an anomaly by European standards, at most comparable with that during the first half of the 1990s in the Czech Republic, where, however, there was at least one leftist newspaper: Právo. Fico's government controls state television, but this is small compensation for his frustrated sense of standing alone in the media landscape."

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