Slovenia
Slovenia is a parliamentary republic with a freely elected government. The judiciary, while somewhat distrusted, has established a record of independent rulings, and the rule of law is generally respected. Corruption remains an issue but the media are proactive in exposing it. The country ranks 54th out of 180 countries in the RSF Press Freedom Index.
Increasingly restrictive media landscape
The coming to power of the far-right SDS party, and prime minister Janez Janša, have made Slovenia take a turn for the worse. Janša’s government took tentative institutional steps to undermine the editorial and financial independence of the public TV broadcaster and the national press agency, eliminating funding for the latter in late 2020 and early 2021. Following Trump’s example, he engaged in a war against independent media, dismissing critical reporting as ‘“fake news”. Meanwhile, privately-owned media outlets suffer economically from the decision to suspend the sale of newspapers in small shops and kiosks with the stated aim of combating the spread of the corona virus.
Safety
Freedom of speech and independent media are under threat as defamation remains criminalised and well-known politicians continue to subject media outlets to slanderous verbal attacks and lawsuits intended to intimidate.
Free Press Unlimited’s projects
For the local journalists in Central Europe, Free Press Unlimited provides some courses about cross-border journalism, sharing with them Free Press Unlimited’s experience in creating and producing transborder journalistic stories, and distributing these stories across the cross-border audience. To develop their skills Free Press Unlimited team also provides mentoring and other assistance in content production.
Photo: Arnaud Regnier.