Slovak Press Watch, where are you ?

With regard to my previous posting, I have been looking for someone, not just anyone, but a journalist, media expert, or a colleague of Ms Ghannamova, who would speak out openly on the malpractices in the Slovak media. Slovak journalists, being in the shackles of their proprietors - who are vassals of their ultrarich moguls - have no courage to open a debate on the vocation of the journalist, and the crooked and shameful practices of the politicians who feel pressed against the wall, i. e. forced to answer a question.

I have heard that Ms Zlatica Puskarova,  an 'inquisitor' for the Markiza TV (much less substantial, clever or eloquent, whose most famous line of inquiry is ...'and how about you Mr/Mrs...?') has given a private phone call to Ms Ghannamova praising her heroic battle to expose the freaks, but, alas, no public acknowledgement followed.  The term 'Slovak journalist' seems to be an oxymoron.  As is hiding behind their celebrity status.

What is worse, however, there is a website called the 'Slovak Press Watch' to monitor the Slovak media.  The last posting is a year old.  Its founder Gabriel Sipos works for Transparency International.  For him, I reckon, media censorship is so transparent that it is not worth his courtesy.

Slovakia's Retroprogressing Idyll

I have received an email from a Slovak friend saying enthusiastically: Slovakia is moving forward! There is a new current affairs programme on TA3, but the presenter was fired after her second appearance, for being incompetent.  Slovaks have finally raised their voices against unprofessionalism in the media.

Curious, I went to the TA3 website to watch the Klub 3 immediately.  And I was transfixed.  Apart from a few gaffes, the presenter Anna Ghannamova was brilliant.  I dare compare her to  Paxman the Rottweiler,  by Slovak standards of course.  She held her own against the 4 leaders of small political parties.  She did not allow them to brag endlessly about their party stuff as they had been used to.  She would bring them back again and again to answer her questions.  She would interrupt when they tried to steal the airtime for propaganda.  She brought out the characters of the politicians:  namely, she exposed the vulgarity, stupidity and boorishness of Nora Mojsejova; the aggressiveness and self-aggrandizement of A. Belousova.  She did not allow them to call the Roma 'gypsies' (as it is a derogatory term in Slovakia). I could go on and on.  Just to wrap it up, she was graceful, fearless and spot on.

Afterwards,  I read,  the aforementioned A. Belousova, leader of a nationalistic party, wrote to the TA3 director an angry letter demanding the presenter's dismissal on the grounds of her being unprofessional, biased and attempting to manipulate public opinion.  N. Mojsejova, the other woman politician,  issued a video clip in which she openly calls the presenter  a 'c..t'.

And the Slovak public joined in.  There was a chorus of savage callings for A. Ghannamova to be sacked.  The poor infantile public failed to notice how she had succeeded in exposing the worst features of the politicians' characters.  All they could see was her 'interrupting and not allowing them to finish what they wanted to say'.

When politicians are unhappy about the interviewer's way of grilling them, it is a sign that he/she is bloody good. Now the Klub 3 has a new presenter: a pretty face, young, deferential and utterly benign. Idyllic. Oh happy days, just before elections!

Yes, Slovakia is moving forward.  Only, in a retrograde fashion.  Still a progress, innit?