PRAGUE – Wojciech Cie?la clearly recalls the moment last November when a letter arrived at his home that summoned him to the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw, Poland.
A journalist for two decades, the 46-year-old Cie?la has made a career exposing corruption. In August, the target of his investigation was a ranking member of the ruling party-controlled Constitutional Tribunal, and Cie?la was accused of publishing the subject’s home address. The article did not give the address, instead describing its luxurious location.
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“It is not possible to find the place and actually I offered a 15-year-old bottle of whiskey to anybody who could find the house using only my report,” Cie?la says. The summons’ real purpose, he said, was to intimidate him and his family. “We were not expecting the letter … so when my wife saw the letter it really scared her.”
The legal threat leveled against Cie?la in Poland is part of what observers say are much broader efforts by governments in Central and Eastern Europe to restrict independent journalists and news organizations. Those efforts, analysts say, include bringing a growing number of news outlets under the control of pro-government factions.
As 2019 dawns, European media experts say the threats to the free press in parts of Central and Eastern Europe are reaching levels unparalleled since the revolutions 30 years ago that ended authoritarian communist rule in the region.
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“It’s clearly unprecedented in the era of the European Union,” says Pauline Adès-Mével, head of EU-Balkans desk of the Paris-based nonprofit group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). “Some have mentioned the fact that after the end of the communist regime they could never had imagined that one day they would have to go through such things again.”
In Poland, the government is accused of coordinated attacks against the media. In addition to questioning Cie?la of Newsweek, internal security forces a week earlier summoned another reporter with U.S.-owned private broadcaster TVN for allegedly spreading Nazi propaganda after going undercover to film a neo-Nazi group for a report in January.
In a Dec. 7 statement, RSF criticized members of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party for threatening journalists with lawsuits for alleged defamation in a separate case. The measures appear to be part of a plan unveiled last year that seeks to “re-Polonize” media controlled by Western investors who entered the market after the fall of communism three decades ago.
In Slovakia, the public was rocked in 2018 by the assassination of journalist Ján Kuciak in February, which resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico.
In the Czech Republic, meanwhile, Prime Minister Andrej Babis is known to control some of his country’s most influential news outlets. Considered among his country’s wealthiest individuals, Babis’ acquisition of the conglomerate Agrofert, which owns many news organizations, has drawn conflict-of-interest charges from EU lawmakers.
“Countries in Central Europe are strongly affected by what is going on with the media,” Csaky says. “Many of the foreign owners that came after communism have since pulled out and now it’s mostly owned by oligarchs.”
In December Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban signed off on a deal that saw pro-government media owners donate hundreds of newspapers, websites, television and radio stations to an umbrella group, the Central European Press and Media Foundation, or CEPMF.
The merger drew sharp criticism that the nationalist government has centralized Hungary’s pro-government media into a propaganda machine that can dominate news cycles and determine what information is available to the public.
“The symbolic meaning is that the government is sending a message … that even if you own an outlet, it is not necessarily yours,” says Zselyke Csaky, research director for Europe and Eurasia at Freedom House. “The government is the main actor and you as a loyalist are just being used as a tool.”
In an email, CEPMF board member Miklós Szantho defended the merger, saying “the main priority of the foundation itself is to serve, preserve and uphold balanced media in Hungary, in all terms.”
Since Orban took office in 2010, he and his ruling Fidesz Party have been known to apply financial pressure against dissenting news outlets by cutting them off from badly needed advertising revenue, while simultaneously targeting journalists by name. The move has often put Orban at odds with Brussels, while rights groups have complained that the EU has been slow to sanction his government. Still, observers worry that Orban’s tactics could spread throughout the region.
“Orban is more strategic than others and serves as a model for all these leaders,” Adès-Mével says. “After Orban took power and installed the new media law in 2011 … (Poland’s de facto leader Jaros?aw) Kaczy?ski followed the exact same strategy.”
In Bulgaria, the threat to independent media is among the greatest in Europe, with many outlets owned by oligarchs and journalists increasingly facing attacks and death threats by criminal groups, RSF says. The country currently ranks 111th in the world in the organization’s media freedom index, lowest among EU member states.
In a report issued last month, the EU-funded Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom depicted what is now an “alarming situation for journalists” throughout the EU.
“Several member-states may be neglecting their obligations, according to the standards on the safety of journalists from the Council of Europe, imposing on states the positive obligation of guaranteeing an enabling environment for journalists to permit them to carry out their job without fear,” the report states.
Despite the gloomy outlook , Cie?la remains optimistic, saying that Central Europeans would likely not stand for the continued deterioration of free press after fighting so hard for democracy some three decades ago.
“I hope the situation will get better … but who knows,” he says.
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