Politics as usual: the brazen subjugation of public service broadcasting in Poland, Slovakia and Romania
Politicians are blotting out the promised dawn of true public-service broadcasting in central and eastern Europe, writes Marius Dragomir in the European Voice.
"In the early 2000s," Dragomir writes, "political elites in central and eastern European countries .. shrewdly espoused the cause of independent public-service broadcasting" as they anxiously awaited EU membership. "But almost a decade later, central and eastern European politicians have changed the rhetoric":
In the past three years, they have brazenly sought to re-establish their grip on public-service media, chiefly by pushing loyal people onto the governing bodies of broadcasters. This renewed politicisation is widespread across the region, but it is clearest in three of them: Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
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