Original scientific paper
Reproducing Political Capitalism in the Media of East-Central Europe
Slavko Splichal
Abstract
The article examines a decade of changes in the media after the collapse of the socialist
system in East-Central Europe. Several structural tendencies in the ECE countries
may be identified which are, in different degrees, spread throughout the region
and reflect the imitative nature of the new systems. It is argued that the imitative nature
of the newly emerging systems is an almost unmanageable obstacle to the development
of more democratic systems in the region. The imitative tendencies are clustered
in two broader groups: (1) those imitating external environment, primarily
Western Europe and the USA, which comprise Italianization; denationalization and
privatization; commercialization, and inter- or transnationalization; and (2) those
“imitating the past”, i.e. the former system of state socialism: renationalization, and
nationalistic and religious exclusivism. In addition to the domination of unilateral
imitation, the greatest impediment to the progress in media democratization represents
an immense increase in lawsuits against journalists and the media, in which journalists
are often found guilty of libel and offence and severely fined or even imprisoned.
Consequently, the developments in the ECE countries led to the establishment of a
kind of “political capitalism” and created a system of “paternalist commercialism” in
the media, with the state (government) often acting both as a powerful political and
economic actor.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
23370
URI
Publication date:
20.5.2000.
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