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The media landscape in Slovakia

With only around five million inhabitants Slovakia has a small media landscape in comparison with the Czech Republic. This is particularly apparent regarding the quality newspapers, of which there are only three (Sme, Pravda and Hospodářské noviny). Nevertheless these newspapers play an important role in day-to-day politics, and provided constant critical comment on the left-nationalist governments of Vladimír Mečiar and Robert Fico.

Palais Grassalkovich, Bratislava
Foto: lipeamie, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

These governments had a comparatively easier time with the public television broadcaster STV and its radio counterpart Sro, which were always quick to express approval of government policy. The two private television stations Markíza and JOJ use the tabloid style and have considerably more viewers than STV. The country also has one private news channel, TA 3.

The quality newspaper with the highest circulation is Pravda, the former central organ of the communist party in what was the Slovakian part of Czechoslovakia. The paper is still left-leaning and is popular among all age groups. Right behind Pravda comes Sme, which as Smena was the newspaper of the Communist Youth League before 1989. The paper is liberal and is above all popular among a younger readership in the capital Bratislava.

In 1992 Vladimír Meciar sought to bring Smena "into line" by appointing a new chief editor, with the result that readers abandoned the paper en masse. Some of the editors then founded the daily Sme, which attracted Smena's former readers. The two papers finally merged in 1995 and the name Sme remained. The Hungarian-language daily Új Szó caters to the Hungarian minority, which makes up 10 percent of Slovakia's population. The country's top-selling newspaper is the tabloid Nový Čas.

The Internet newspaper aktualne.sk has published exclusively online since 2006. For its part Sme occupies the strongest position among the newspapers' online editions. Sme also brings together most of the country's bloggers, and is the sole newspaper that produces video commentaries.

The new press law introduced in 2008 caused a considerable fuss, particularly due to the right to a counterstatement it entrenches. The law was pushed through by the Fico government to counteract the "spread of media lies", and met with heavy criticism from publishers as well as international organisations. Nevertheless with only a few exceptions the fear that the right to a counterstatement would be used by members of the government to counteract critical newspaper articles has proved unfounded. Under the current conservative government of Prime Minister Iveta Radičová the media can go about their work unhindered.

This country's media at euro|topics