By far the most important and influential dailies and broadcast media use Estonian. Any cooperation would have been unthinkable three years ago. Parliamentary elections in March showed that information related to campaign finance continues to be hidden from the media. Lacking any freedom of information legislation, journalists are critical that such details must be concealed, according to election law, until a month after the election. Two bills were drafted to make party financing more transparent, but these did not come into force until after the election.
Journalists are also wary of draconian libel legislation.
One case that continues to attract attention involves award-winning journalist Enno Tammer, fined in 1997 for insulting the wife of a prominent politician. Tammer took his case to the European Court of Human Rights. An agreement signed by Estonia's broadcast media in January ensured that journalists were banned from hosting programmes for the six weeks leading up to the elections if they were also running for a parliamentary seat. The ban was not compulsory under law, however, and many private radio stations ignored the ban. After the elections, some commentators were quoted as saying that the media had failed to press politicians hard enough.