When Ján Kuciak, a journalist at Slovakian news site Aktuality, was murdered, protests broke out and the then prime minister, Robert Fico, resigned. Kuciak had been investigating alleged corruption by people connected to Slovakia’s government, and his death cast a harsh spotlight on reports of links between organised crime and high-ranking Slovakian officials.
Nearly six years later, following elections in September, Fico is back in power – and Aktuality, among several other media organisations, is in the new leader’s sights.
Soon after he was appointed head of a coalition government, his office announced he was “cutting off any communication” with four media outlets it said “openly display hostile political attitudes”.
The prime minister’s office accused the media organisations – Aktuality, the popular private television channel Markíza and dailies SME and Denník N – of failing to inform the public “truthfully, comprehensively and on time”.
The announcement, which came after Fico threatened to deny the four outlets access to the government office, has fuelled concerns about press freedom in Slovakia.
The prime minister has long been open about his dislike for critical media outlets. There are now fears that the populist leader, who ran for office on a platform opposing military aid to Ukraine and criticising Russian sanctions, could be copying the strategies of Viktor Orbán in neighbouring Hungary to put pressure on independent institutions.
Fico’s rhetoric has also raised the question of how, just years after the murder of Kuciak and his partner, Martina Kušnírová, shook Slovakian society, media outlets including Aktuality itself could become the target of a sitting prime minister.
“This is a really very difficult environment and time for Slovakian journalists,” said Peter Bárdy, Aktuality’s editor-in-chief.
“I’m a journalist since 1995, so it’s a pretty long time, and I don’t remember a time when people told me on the streets that I’m an enemy of ordinary people,” he said. Now, though, “it is happening sometimes”.
While senior politicians discrediting the media is far from a new phenomenon in Slovakia, some journalists say the environment is getting tougher.
“I have dozens of very bad messages in my mailbox – in my Facebook Messenger – weekly,” Bárdy said, describing “harassment, hate messages – it’s disgusting sometimes”.
Monika Tódová, a friend of Kuciak who works at Denník N, also described a challenging mood.
“It was [the] mafia who killed Ján Kuciak. But now, if something happened, I’m pretty sure it would be someone completely mad from Facebook, believing that we are devils … so it is dangerous,” she said.
A man who confessed to shooting Kuciak and Kušnírová, as well as two other men, were sentenced in connection with the killing.
Marián Kočner, a well-connected businessman who prosecutors alleged ordered the murder, was acquitted, but his associate Alena Zsuzsová was found guilty of both taking part in planning the Kuciak murder and the intended killing of two prosecutors. Kočner, however, is currently serving a sentence in an unrelated fraud case.
While Kuciak’s murder put a spotlight on journalists’ safety and high-level corruption in Slovakia, successive crises have led a segment of the population to focus on other issues.
The investigative reporter’s murder “woke up the people” and “a lot of people said that we don’t want to be in a country like this, that we want changes”, said Bárdy.
But then “years of Covid and years with the politicians of the new government who brought a lot of amateurism and a lot of mistakes … changed the opinion of people in Slovakia”, he said.
Experts and journalists say that Fico and his Smer party have been increasingly portraying journalists as enemies as part of a political comeback strategy.
“There was a lot of hatred against mainstream media during the campaign and also during the whole period of after Kuciak, when Smer was down,” said Milan Nič, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Now, Fico – who critics say has relied heavily on alternative and conspiratorial media to get his message out – is moving “to show the voters that he’s doing something”.
Anti-media rhetoric appeals to a segment of the public.
Only 37% of Slovaks trust the media, according to a 2023 study by the Globsec thinktank, compared with 53% in the neighbouring Czech Republic.
Slovakia “is the most conspiratorial in the whole region”, said sociologist Michal Vašečka. The country, he said, was “deeply polarised – and even with Kuciak, half of society immediately after it happened considered it as a conspiracy”.
Fico’s Smer has been able to capitalise on conspiratorial narratives.
Aktuality’s Bárdy said: “They started to be the voice of anti-system, pro-Russian and anti-liberal democratic voters, and this is the reason why Fico started to attack against the media strongly and more vulgarly than before.”
Journalists point out that Fico already routinely ignores questions from reporters he perceives as critical – but say his decision to formally stop communicating with leading outlets does have an impact.
“The difference today is that, from the position of prime minister, his stance is legitimising attacks against these media,” wrote the SME newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Beata Balogová.
Fico has pushed back against criticism of his decision to publicly cut off leading media.
“Some of the media is upset that I don’t talk to them. When they stop lying, we can start,” he wrote on Facebook.
The prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
But some experts argue that the prime minister’s decision to declare he is not speaking to some media, rather than banning them from entering government premises as first threatened, could be interpreted as a sign that the legal safeguards protecting Slovakia’s press are working.
“Smer is still not completely crazy,” said the German Council on Foreign Relations’ Nič. “They are testing maybe how far they can go, and they are also showing something symbolically that their voters want to see,” he added.
And the press is not the only independent institution on Fico’s radar.
A government plan to scrap a special prosecutor’s office tasked with investigating sensitive corruption and organised crime cases has fuelled fears inside and outside Slovakia that Fico could be moving to undermine checks and balances.
“What he did to the four outlets,” said Nič, is “the first shot in a long-term battle.”
