Journalism Ethics in Eastern Europe - by Péter Bajomi-Lázár & Dalma Boldog (Hardcover)

About the Book

This textbook looks into the current ethical challenges of public communication in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and addresses some of the most pressing issues of journalism, including political and corporate pressures, declining commercial revenues, the rise of citizen journalism, the mass-scale dissemination of online disinformation and character-assassination campaigns.

Book Synopsis

Examines the ethical challenges facing journalism and public communication in Eastern Europe, analysing the effects of political change, digitalisation and media policy on journalistic integrity and democratic function

Journalism underwent multiple changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Eastern Europe, including a political and economic transformation, technological change, a generation shift, tabloidisation and the rise of new professional roles. The journalism landscapes of the region that were for most of the second half of the 20th century uniformly shaped by the Soviet theory and practice of the press have turned highly diverse by the early 21st century. Yet they share a number of similarities, most of which are rooted in the joint historical legacy of the region's countries, their current economic hardships and, in some cases, democratic backsliding.
Some of these similarities are also explained by the general crisis of journalism hitting the region as an outcome of globalisation and digitalisation after the millennium. In consequence, the revenues of traditional news organisations have been on the decline, the rise of social media has resulted in a mass-scale dissemination of disinformation and, most importantly, public trust in legacy media has been largely lost. These changes call for a renewal of the 'invisible contract' between professional journalists and the public. To regain trust, professional journalists must reconsider the standards of ethical journalism in collaboration with the audiences and strengthen the mechanisms of self-regulation.
This textbook offers a critical analysis of some of the most pressing challenges ahead of contemporary journalism and public communication in Eastern Europe. Based on general media landscape descriptions and brief case studies, it attempts to identify some key areas of concern, including organised disinformation and character-assassination campaigns disseminated via social media platforms, and to offer some self-regulatory responses to them. It also argues that ethical communication calls for more than just ethical journalism: media policy must also be ethically based and seek answers that provide all citizens with equal access to the means of public communication.

About the Author

Péter Bajomi-Lázár is Professor of Mass Communication at the Budapest University of Economics and Business. His latest monograph is Party Colonisation of the Media in Central and Eastern Europe (2014) and his latest edited volume is Media in Third-Wave Democracies: Southern and Central/Eastern Europe in a Comparative Perspective (2017).
Dalma Boldog is Senior Lecturer of Mass Communication at the Budapest University of Economics and Business and author of the monograph Csernobil a magyar médiában. Egy atomkatasztrófa lenyomatai [Chernobyl in the Hungarian Media: Traces of a Nuclear Disaster, 2024].