Slovakia is not a typical democratic country because we have the least pluralistic media in the entire EU. We have dysfunctional media.
Just as evil spreads due to the lack of good, so too do lies and misinformation spread due to the lack of truth and truthful information.
I often wonder why Slovakia is the country where people believe fake news, hoaxes, and Kremlin propaganda the most. What is the main reason?
I am increasingly aware that the problem is not the so-called "alternative media" themselves. Nor is the Russian government particularly brilliant. The real problem is the so-called "mainstream media". In Slovakia, the media simply do not work, and Kremlin propaganda simply exploits this weak point of the Slovak Republic.
A sign of a democratic country is parliamentary democracy and also free pluralistic media. Slovakia is a truly democratic country in terms of politics – we are a parliamentary democracy, we are even a more democratic country than the USA, where people can only choose from two parties. However, a condition of democracy is also a second thing, and that is free, balanced, pluralistic media. Despite the fact that there is freedom of the press in Slovakia, the media are not pluralistic, but one-sided, similar to hard dictatorial regimes. What has been achieved in Slovakia is a very rare phenomenon that does not exist anywhere else in the world. Despite freedom of the press, we have equally one-sided media as in a hard dictatorial regime, and we have created this very bad media environment ourselves. And I will immediately explain how this is possible:
The problem is that the media practically does not report on Russia at all, they report very briefly and very politically correctly about Russia. This creates a huge gap in the market, because people want to be informed about Russia more. If the media does not fill this gap in the market, then there is a huge space for madmen and mentally disturbed fools from pro-Kremlin disinformation websites and social networks, who do report more in detail about Russian politics, but these are aggressive lies. The reality is very sad. In Slovakia, mentally disturbed fools from pro-Kremlin disinformation websites determine what information is true and what is not.
The media should react to disinformation websites – that's how it should be, but the reality is that the media pretends that no disinformation exists and therefore there is no need to react to it.
There is an alternative to aggressive disinformation and lies. And that alternative is quality information and quality analysis. However, our Slovak media do not fulfill this role at all. It does not even occur to them to verify whether the Kremlin's disinformation is really true, let alone react to it.
On the contrary, I can very positively appreciate Czech journalists. Although the Slovak and Czech Republics are very close in terms of language and culture, our Czech brothers differ greatly from us in how they face disinformation propaganda and information warfare. Czech journalists fulfill their role correctly and balance the disinformation waste of Kremlin websites with quality, truthful factual information and analyses. Czech media often actively respond to Kremlin disinformation.
While Czech citizens are free, have pluralistic media, and can freely choose whether to believe the Kremlin's disinformation or quality, truthful analyses, Slovaks, on the other hand, have no choice. Slovaks can choose either media that practically ignore Russia or disinformation Kremlin websites that focus on Russia in detail.
There is a strange paradox. While there was no democracy under socialism, it was a dictatorship, there was at least media freedom, and thanks to media freedom, the communist dictatorship was overthrown – people could choose whether to follow official state propaganda or pro-Western media such as Radio Free Europe or Voice of America. Today, these things have been reversed – although we have parliamentary democracy, we do not have free media. Slovaks are surrounded only by one-sided information – fake news and disinformation propaganda, which aims to create artificial division, disruption, and disintegration of society.
The disinformation and one-sided information environment is balanced by only one medium, Denník N, in which a few journalists actively fight against disinformation, but it does not have a significant demographic impact on society. Denník N also has to face aggressive disinformation attacks, and most people have come to believe the disinformation that Denník N is extremely pro-American, liberal, and Russophobic. In reality, none of these things are true. While Denník N is considered extreme in Slovakia, in the Czech Republic it is the standard – all media outlets function with the same quality as Denník N, and even write much higher quality analyses.
I am very sad that the Slovak media do not even adhere to basic ethical standards. The basic and main task of the media is to seek the truth. However, they do not seek it. While a Czech journalist who focuses on foreign news, Russia, reads dozens of articles in Russian or English every day, they do not only seek one-sided information and do not only seek Kremlin propaganda but also independent opposition Russian media. While a Czech journalist publishes one article about Russia, there are dozens of hours of hard work behind it, dozens of articles read on a certain issue. That is why Czech journalists always inform people truthfully, objectively, factually, and their articles are quality analyses. In Slovakia, it works exactly the opposite. Editors-in-chief do not entrust any journalist with seeking the truth at all. Slovak media only copy low-quality articles from the Press Agency of the Slovak Republic, which are only very brief and superficial news from Russia. These are not systematic analyses. Copying such an article is a matter of a few seconds. Slovak journalists, shame on you!! When people do not get serious information, then there is a huge space for mentally disturbed wretches from pro-Kremlin disinformation websites.
Solutions to this problem
Since the Slovak media have financial problems, they should merge with the Czech media in terms of ownership. Furthermore, the Slovak media should take over information from the Czech media, which they are not doing at all at the moment.