Putting the ‘public’ into public-service broadcasting

RTVS should not be withdrawing support for investigative journalism.

RTVS building in Mlynská DolinaRTVS building in Mlynská Dolina (Source: Sme archive)

“Investigative reporting has survived and will survive because the public values it and because the fire to do it burns in the individual reporters and editors who do it, not in the companies that employ them,” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Deborah Nelson told me in an interview during her first visit to Slovakia in 2016.

SkryťTurn off ads
Article continues after video advertisement
SkryťTurn off ads
Article continues after video advertisement

Nelson recently returned to Slovakia with a group of students, who came here to explore how Slovak media are coping with fake news and to find out which groups of people are most receptive to propaganda-driven messages on social networks. As it happens, they arrived just as Slovak media were discussing the decision by the management of RTVS, Slovakia’s public-service broadcaster, to scrap Reportéri, the last investigative reporting show on Slovak television.

The rest of this article is premium content at Spectator.sk
Subscribe now for full access

I already have subscription - Sign in

Subscription provides you with:
  • Immediate access to all locked articles (premium content) on Spectator.sk
  • Special weekly news summary + an audio recording with a weekly news summary to listen to at your convenience (received on a weekly basis directly to your e-mail)
  • PDF version of the latest issue of our newspaper, The Slovak Spectator, emailed directly to you
  • Access to all premium content on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk

Top stories

Janka, a blogger, during the inauguration of the first flight to Athens with Aegean Airlines at the airport in Bratislava on September 14, 2023.

A Czech rail operator connects Prague and Ukraine, Dominika Cibulková endorses Pellegrini, and Bratislava events.


Píšem or pišám?

"Do ľava," (to the left) I yelled, "Nie, do prava" (no, to the right), I gasped. "Dolšie," I screamed. "Nie, nie, horšie..." My Slovak girlfriend collapsed in laughter. Was it something I said?


Matthew J. Reynolds
Czech biochemist Jan Konvalinka.

Jan Konvalinka was expecting a pandemic before Covid-19 came along.


SkryťClose ad