Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico, right, and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pose for photographers during a round table meeting at an EU Summit in Brussels on March 22, 2024. (source: TASR/AP)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Press freedom declines in Slovakia as the Fico government continues its media capture efforts. The prime minister is still set to travel to Moscow – despite false stories claiming he was poisoned.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Press under pressure
“Your newsrooms were celebrating when I was shot,” Prime Minister Robert Fico claimed – falsely – in comments directed at journalists convened for his latest Sunday morning press briefing, a now-regular event by which he is trying to set the agenda after a bumpy few months for his coalition government.
When he was asked how he is doing and whether he feels physically and mentally fit for what is arguably one of the most demanding jobs in the country – a legitimate question given repeated cancellations and changes to his programme over the past few weeks – he took it as “another media attack”, countering with the claim that half of the salaries of the Sme daily’s journalists are paid by George Soros and that the newspaper should announced that on its masthead. For the record, his claim is flatly untrue and he knows it – but he also knows that the “Soros explanation” still works well on part of the Slovak audience.
Claims aimed at delegitimising the news media as a relevant source of information for the public are part of the wider media capture strategy that the Fico government has been pursuing since – and in fact long before – it came to power in the autumn of 2023.
As a result, Slovakia has dropped in the latest World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, to 38th place, marking its worst ranking in 15 years. Among EU countries, Slovakia now ranks 19th out of 27.
Under the Fico government, Slovakia has become another example of how the media capture model practiced by Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán may be serving as an inspiration or a playbook for other wannabe autocrats in the region.
