A média gyarmatosítása
The Colonization of the Media

Why Do Certain Central and East European Governments Respect the Freedom of the Press and Why Don’t Others?

Summary/Abstract: Why is the situation of the freedom of the press worse in Central and Eastern Europe in general than in Western Europe? Why does the situation of the freedom of the press differ in the different Central and East European countries and why in various periods? I try to find an answer to these questions by exploring the interrelationships between party systems and media systems. When studying the first question I argue that the young parties of young democracies miss the sources necessary to party building and party organisation which is substituted by the colonisation and exploitation of the state and the media. The occupation of the media explains why the situation of the freedom of the press is worse in general in the East than in the West. I explain the variations of the freedom of the press that can be observed in space and time within the Central and East European region by the various patterns of the colonization of the media: the more centralised the decision-making mechanisms of the governing parties are the greater is the probability of the one-party colonization of the media, and the more decentralised are their decisionmaking mechanisms the larger is the probability of multi-party colonization. The one-party colonization of the media restricts the freedom of the press more than its multi-party colonization. In other words: in the post-communist context the weaker the government is the stronger the media would be.

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