PRAGUE — When 27-year-old Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak was found shot to death in his home along with his fiancé e in February, it sparked a wave of public protests not seen in the small Central European country since the “Velvet Revolution” against communist Czechoslovakia nearly three decades ago.
Spurred by the tragic poignancy of young couple’s murder, tens of thousands of Slovaks took to the streets with calls of justice for Kuciak, who at the time of his murder was investigating Italian mafia ties in Slovak public life, and Martina Ku?nírová, an archeologist. Though corruption in the ranks of the Slovak government is no secret, it has never led to the murder of a journalist doing her or his job.
In Slovakia the incident threatens to destabilize the government — Prime Minister Robert Fico and Interior Minister Robert Kali?ák have since resigned. It also has brought to light a steadily growing threat to press freedom across the continent. Since 2015 , 22 journalists have been killed in Europe, according to the European Federation of Journalists.
“We are extremely worried,” says Pauline Ades-Mevel, head of EU-Balkans desk of the Paris-based non-profit group Reporters Without Borders . “For the past 10 years we noticed some deterioration of press freedoms in the region, but more recently it seems in the past two to three years it has been even more evident and clear.”
Kuciak’s death is the latest in a string of high-profile killings of journalists. Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese reporter covering corruption and money laundering, was 53 when she was killed in a remote-controlled car bomb blast outside her home in Bidnija last October.
“In today’s world where a journalist is killed every five days with almost full impunity as a result, we have to stop the European region from becoming an environment where journalists are no longer safe to do their work,” several human rights and free-press groups wrote in an open letter to the European Commission on March 6 in response to the deaths of Kuciak and Galizia.
Media freedom in Central and Eastern Europe is threatened in other ways. News outlets throughout Central Europe are being bought by influential politicians and businessmen who enforce censorship, while political leaders in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have become increasingly hostile toward the press.
In Slovakia, a large number of media outlets are now controlled directly or indirectly by local businessmen behind two Slovak financial groups, Penta and J&T, which have been accused of having corrupt links with the government. After Penta gained a large stake in the daily newspaper SME in 2014, a number of editors left the newspaper.
Fico, the recently resigned prime minister, has brought several libel suits against newspapers and repeatedly disparages them in public. In November 2016 he referred to reporters as “dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes.”
“Our press has been through a significant change with the ownership changes two years ago. I don’t think it affected the freedom newspapers before then but now this is a whole different thing. It just came all of a sudden,” said Michaela Terenzani, editor-in-chief of the English-language Slovak Spectator, in reference to Kuciak’s murder.
“I’m not saying journalists are becoming scared but they need to consider their own safety and editors need to be considerate of the safety of their reporters.”
In the neighboring Czech Republic, the situation is quite similar. As the owner of some of the country’s most influential newspapers, recently elected Prime Minister Andrej Babis has been accused of curtailing the news.
“The new owners that bought these media are usually the business elite … usually connected with the political elite and what we are witnessing is an unbelievable (concentration of) political and economic power in the media,” says Filip Lab, the head of the Department of Journalism at Charles University.
Lab says the new owners are replacing Western entrepreneurs that first started news media after the fall of communism three decades ago.
“Western owners also brought a Western standard of journalism and that’s one important loss for us in… these countries.”
In addition to being chastised by name on popular conspiracy websites, Czech journalists have had to deal with an equally aggressive President Milos Zeman, who last October affronted reporters by brandishing a replica Kalashnikov inscribe with the words “for journalists.” Recently elected to a second term, the 73-year-old anti-immigration leader used his inauguration speech at Prague Castle to accuse the media of being biased and manipulative, prompting some lawmakers to leave the ceremony.
According to the latest Reporters Without Borders’ “World Press Freedom Index,” media in the European Union and Balkans are still rated the freest in the world. But the region has registered the biggest increase in media constrictions and violations, with press freedom violations jumping 17.5 percent during the past five years.
Among countries witnessing the biggest drop in press freedom is Poland, falling seven spots in the ranking of 180 countries, to 54th place. Conservative leaders there passed a law giving the government direct control over public broadcasting in 2015 and have been pushing to restrict foreign ownership of the media. Hungary, meanwhile, fell four spots to number 71 as Prime Minister Viktor Orban has steadily tightened his grip on the media.
No European country has faltered as much as Bulgaria, which dropped in media freedom from 36th in the world in 2006 to 109th out of 180 countries last year, making it the lowest-ranked among EU member states.
Over the past 10 years, the Bulgarian media market has been in freefall with rampant corruption and ties between media, politicians and oligarchs. Among them is controversial MP Delyan Peevski, who controls 80 percent of the distribution market, according to a report issued this year by the Union of Publishers in Bulgaria. The report also cited that European funds are being redirected to certain media, creating dependence and lack of transparency.
“European cohesion programs have … become a significant part of the local media, which are small and less powerful with just a few employers and they rely on state municipal funding, which means they cannot afford to be critical of those in power,” says Maria Cheresheva, founder of the Association of European Journalists–Bulgaria.
Still, with media freedom facing new challenges throughout Europe, journalists have not been totally powerless. After Czech Prime Minister Babis took over the daily newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes in 2013, reporters launched their own weekly magazine the following year. And when Slovakia’s Denník SME was found to be bankrolled by Penta, editors there established Denník N, now one of the top newspapers in Slovakia.
“The only thing we can do now is talk as journalists and continue to pursue our mission to inform the world about what is going on,” says Terenzani of The Slovak Spectator.
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Slovak Journalist’s Death Underscores Growing Threat to European Press originally appeared on usnews.com
