The analysis of the expert team of the Republic for Culture and Media movement continues with the results of the fulfillment of the journalistic principle of plurality of opinions when the Slovak Radio’s (RTVS) discussion show Saturday Dialogues is staffed by representatives of political subjects.
The evaluation shows that the most represented political party in the session in 2022 was the (then) ruling OĽANO movement, whose representatives were in the session 27 times. The opposition Hlas-SD (12x), SaS (9x), Smer-SSD (9x) and Sme rodinja (8x) follow with a large distance.
The ratio of the coalition and the opposition is 51:21.
In the RTVS radio show Saturday dialogues thus, the representation of coalition politicians is evidently on top (51) compared to the presentation of the opposition (21), from which no one appeared either from ĽSNS or from the REPUBLIC movement.
Another non-transparent anomaly that does not meet the principle of presenting a plurality of opinions and plural representation is extraordinary participation of Eduard Heger (12x)in all cases on my ownwithout opinion or political opposition.
In addition, the moderators of the public media of this show did not take a substitute oppositional stance in this case.
The methodology is based on the comparison of preferences from public opinion polls of individual subjects according to the Focus agency throughout the year 2022 (blue and black colors) with the number of participants in the session (red color).
image/graph: author
The evaluators took into account the basic fact that the Slovak Republic is a parliamentary pluralistic democracy and that the parliament has a decisive position. Since there have been significant shifts in the NR SR compared to the result of the parliamentary elections (currently, every third member of parliament acts as “unaffiliated” – a total of 50 legislators), the criterion chosen by the analysts is fairer, objective and fair to all subjects.
11 politicians appeared in the show for the government movement OĽANO, for Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) seven, for We are a family three, for the party For people two, of which J. Šeliga was alone once out of four and V. Remišová was twice out of three alone without an opponent.
The most presented opposition politician in the show was Erik Tomáš from Hlasu-SD (7x), while Smer-SD leader Robert Fico did not appear in the discussion show even once during 2022.
It can be easily read from the graph that the government parties OĽANO, Za ľudí and Sme rodina had a superior presentation, while the parties Hlas-SD, Smer-SSD had a lower turnout in proportion to the preferences achieved, and the subjects of the PS and the Republika movement were significantly discriminated against with zero turnout.
Conclusion: The public service broadcaster (RTVS) did not fulfill several legal principles of media policy and journalistic ethics even in the radio discussion program (Saturday Dialogues), which significantly discriminated against some relevant political subjects with parliamentary representation and weakened the public’s right to receive balanced and pluralistic information.
The next part will evaluate the television program Markíza Na telo.
Rafael Rafaj
About the author: Rafael Elo Rafaj (Mgr.) is a journalist, graduated from the Department of Journalism at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava. Author, columnist, analyst, media and communication consultant, lecturer. As a deputy, he worked for six years in the Committee of the National People’s Republic of Slovakia for culture and media. They evaluated him as the most active deputy of the government coalition (2006-10). It primarily deals with media and communication policy, the protection of freedom of speech and expression, and the position of the state language in society. He has been engaged in journalism and writing for 30 years, with a focus on commentaries, glosses, analyzes and essays, which, together with his poems, began to be published in the Literární tějdenník and later in more than a dozen other publications. Author of the book Za národ (2005) and the book to be published The Secret Code of Old Slovaks. Expert and chairman of the expert team for culture and media in the Republic movement.
