Press humilliates itself for financial reasons

Leading daily newspapers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia appeared last week with a white title page featuring only the words: "No news today, only the new Ikea catalogue." Martin M. Šimečka writes in his blog for the liberal weekly Respekt that he doesn't have a problem with advertising, but the ad for the Swedish furniture giant Ikea is a self-abasement for the press: "This isn't the first time that our newspapers offer advertisers their entire title page. But it's the first time that an advertiser uses this to call into question the whole purpose of a newspaper. The slogan 'No news today' is humiliating. It's hard to imagine that a publisher or chief editor would willingly go along with it. Financial constraints must be behind the decision. The newspapers are faring worse and worse and some of them are making losses. So they agree when a company comes along and asks them for their title page. But this raises the question of whether you can read the newspaper in question in the knowledge that it is free and independent."

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