Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slovak-l
Date:         Sun, 11 Oct 1992 14:02:14 EST
From:         HAMMERL@UCS.INDIANA.EDU
Subject:      Press

The following article appeared in the New York Times (11
October 1992, p. Y7).

	Slovak Leader Putting Pressure on the Press

		By Henry Kamm

Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Oct. 5-- Prime Minister Vladimir
Meciar of Slovakia, whose opponents accuse him of governing
autocratically since taking office in June, is making the
press and television targets of sweeping criticism and
threats.
	In recent weeks the Government has in effect
returned Slovak television to state control, as it was in
the years of Communist rule.  A parliamentary steering
committee, dominated by Mr. Meciar's Movement for Democratic
Slovakia, dismissed the director of Slovakia's one
television network on Wednesday on a charge of incompetence.
	Earlier, Parliament passed a Government bill to
overturn a law that had put the network under a supervisory
council that included representatives of all parties,
nonpolitical groups and the network's management.  Under the
new measure, Parliament will choose all council members.
This insures that Government supporters will regulate
broadcasting and appoint key staff.
	"The council was not capable of functioning,"
Bohuslav Geci, Mr. Meciar's spokesman, said in an interview.
 "Amateurs could have done the job better."  Mr. Geci, until
recently a pro-Meciar radio reporter, gave no particulars.
	Jan Fule, the television news director, said in an
interview that Mr. Meciar's crackdown was a consequence of
his refusal to grant the Prime Minister's request for a
regular 10-minute program in which he could address the
republic.  He said he had instead offered Mr. Meciar a
regular program in which television reporters would
interview him.  He said Mr. Meciar had refused this.
	Mr. Fule said he expected to be dismissed when the
new council is chosen.
	In a speech to journalists in the eastern Slovak
city of Kosice last month, Mr. Meciar said the state must
guarantee that the press tells the truth.  He said this
could be achieved by the press itself, acting voluntarily,
"which would protect citizens from lies or manipulation of
information."
	He continued: "There is also another possiblity.  If
you are not going to do it, the state will have to.  If the
state does, there will have to be a law, and every law
contains sanctions."
	Mr. Meciar, who has filed libel suits against at
least two newspapers, said there should be "an institution
to punish such acts" as spreading untruthful information or
harming someone's good name.
	Mr. Meciar, whose party has been the driving force
behind the plan for Slovaks and Czechs to end their
federation, was a Communist Party functionary until the
Soviet-led invasion of 1968.
	Like many others at the time, he was excluded from
the party by the post-invasion leadership and practiced law
until the 1989 revolution, when he re-entered politics.
Since taking office Mr. Meciar, who was not linked to
dissident circles, has been accused by many former
dissidents of acting in traditional bureaucratic Communist
fashion.
	Mr. Geci, the spokesman, said Mr. Meciar had no time
to give interviews.  But in an interview the Prime Minister
gave to the newspaper Narodna Obroda in August, he said it
was distrust of the press that made him and associates limit
press access.
	"Several of us believe that for the moment it is
better for us not to speak for publication and not to create
a possibility for such information to be distorted or
misused," Mr. Meciar said.  "Whatever we would say would be
turned against us."
	In a draft press law now before Parliament, the
Government proposes that the texts of interviews granted by
officials must be submitted to the official for approval
before publication.
	Journalists who sympathize with the Prime Minister
have split from the old journalists' union and formed a
group called Journalists for a Correct Picture of Slovakia.
	In another measure against critical newspapers, the
Government is acting to block approval of new companies that
were formed after the collapse of Commuinism in 1989, under
which Communist Party-owned papers were taken over by their
staffs and turned into publications free of political
control.  It has limited such actions to papers it considers
hostile.
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