In Slovakia, political information is disseminated through the mass media: television, radio, the press, and the internet. The public is becoming increasingly reliant on the internet for news, with television and the press becoming less important as news sources.
On the whole there is little overt advocacy of political platforms in the media, and Slovakia is rated fairly highly among nations in terms of freedom of the press, which is upheld under the 1992 Slovak Constitution. Subsequent legislation deals with transparency and plurality of media ownership, although the degree of transparency and plurality achieved in practice is sometimes questioned. There are different national regulatory authorities for press and broadcast media. There have been some high-profile defamation cases arising from media reports.
Television and radio broadcasters include large private sector organisations and the public service broadcaster Radio and Television of Slovakia (RTVS). There are a number of national daily printed newspapers, but none exceed around 60,000 circulation. Many more readers, especially younger ones, are using online editions of the newspapers, other online news portals, or social media.
Overview
The main source (63 percent) of information about political issues for Slovak citizens is television broadcast. The second most relevant source is the Internet. Traditionally, the most trusted source of information has been radio broadcast: public radio was usually less politically biased. According to some experts, it is possible to detect that the majority of the media and journalists show liberal-right or centre-right attitudes. However, there are no typical media affiliations with specific political parties, except for newspaper Pravda, which has shown some political and ideological bias since 2010 openly declaring its liberal-left ideology. Other news outlets, instead, seem to be more influenced by commercial and indirectly by political factors than by ideological factors .
Describing a particular parallelism between media and politics, some experts noticed that some groups of voters prefers different media types than others: for instance, “nationalist- leftists” would prefer printed media, rather than “liberal-conservatives”, who would better like television news as well as social media.
The 2017 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders ranked Slovakia 17th out of 180 countries and the NGO Freedom House described its freedom of the press status as “free” in the last years. Following the Murder of Ján Kuciak in 2018, the ranking of Slovakia slid significantly to 33 in 2020 and further to 35 in 2021.
Media outlets
The most followed news outlets comprehend major private television channel Markíza, public television Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska - RTVS (Radio and Television Slovakia), and some of the key daily newspapers, especially Sme and Nový Čas. Over the years, the internet began to increasingly become an important source for information, over print media and radio as well as becoming a serious rival to television. The number of visitors to news portals is increasing, while the circulation of newspapers as well as viewers of main television news programs are declining.
According to some experts, the number of regular readers of traditional daily printed press is around a quarter of the population. Moreover, there is an increasing number of those who subscribe and read only online editions. However, according to some experts, the average circulation is less than half of the average of the European Union member states. The most popular tabloid newspapers are Nový čas (New Time) and Plus JEDEN DEŇ (One More Day), while the main news outlets are Pravda (Truth), Sme (We Are), Denník N (Daily N) and business/economic daily Hospodárske noviny (Economy Newspaper). According to the newspaper itself, Pravda’s daily circulation in 2015 reached over 61,000 copies. As to Sme, in September 2016 its circulation was over 27,000. As to the newspaper Hospodárske noviny, it sold 11,650 copies in September 2016. There also is a regional newspaper in Hungarian language named Új Szó (New Word), sold in the southern parts of Slovakia, which distributed 17,500 copies in September 2016.
Radio
Rádio Expres is the market leader, followed by the public radio first channel Rádio Slovensko (SRo) and by Fun rádio.