The 1989 Revolution and Transformation in Slovak Public-Service Radio
The 1989 Revolution and Transformation in Slovak Public-Service Radio

Summary/Abstract: Media, newsrooms and journalists themselves changed dramatically after 1989 in Czechoslovakia. The media policy of the communist regime was replaced by the media policy of an emerging democracy. This study is an attempt to understand how this radical change of political regime and the relationship between media and power has affected the national, public service broadcaster Slovak Radio [Slovenský rozhlas]. This study is a description of the events of the 1989 Revolution in the Czechoslovak Radio in Slovakia and its immediate aftermath. It focuses on the news, because the process of news-making changed radically, including major personal changes. Qualitative in-depth interviews with five leading personalities from the public service radio broadcaster, who played an important part in these changes, describe the revolution from the Slovak Radio employees’ point of view and demonstrate the practical impact of the transformation on everyday work in media during the revolution and transformation. As the research is methodologically based on oral history, the respondents describe the most important processes in newsrooms during the change of regime, as well as the most important impact of this paradigmatic change in the Slovak Radio.

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