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.

Review Quotes

"This timely and incisive study unpacks the ethical, political, and technological forces reshaping journalism across Eastern Europe. With clarity and scholarly rigor, it exposes systemic challenges while offering thoughtful pathways forward. An essential resource for anyone seeking to understand or strengthen democratic communication today."-Marius Dragomir, Department of Public Policy, Central European University, Austria.

"Through a remarkable knowledge of the existing literature, this book offers an interesting landscape of the ethics of journalism in Central Eastern Europe. The theme is discussed with an eye to the situation in the western world and the very established thought on professional journalism."-Paolo Mancini, Università di Perugia, Italy.
"Seminal go-to book on not just ethics and journalism theories and its specifics in Eastern Europe but also the challenging realities: of digitization, citizen journalism, media systems, digital public and digital public media, but also disinformation, smear campaigns and other anomalies that affect journalism in Easter Europe-but also elsewhere."-Prof. Marko Milosavljevic, Department of Journalism, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This book takes a 360° approach to addressing the contemporary challenges facing professional journalism, from economic constraints and audience fragmentation to disinformation and the question of what constitutes morally right or wrong behaviour. Both journalists and scholars can learn a great deal from these highly experienced academic writers.-Josef Trappel, Professor for media policy and media economics at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria.

"Timely and incisive, written in an elegant and informative style, this book is a slow, delightful read on journalism ethics. Drawing on historical cases and today's examples, it guides readers in understanding how the media mirrors broader societal challenges that reshape how news is created, shared, and consumed."-Aukse Balčytiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania.

"This timely and incisive study unpacks the ethical, political, and technological forces reshaping journalism across Eastern Europe. With clarity and scholarly rigor, it exposes systemic challenges while offering thoughtful pathways forward. An essential resource for anyone seeking to understand or strengthen democratic communication today."--Marius Dragomir, Department of Public Policy, Central European University, Austria.

"Through a remarkable knowledge of the existing literature, this book offers an interesting landscape of the ethics of journalism in Central Eastern Europe. The theme is discussed with an eye to the situation in the western world and the very established thought on professional journalism."--Paolo Mancini, Università di Perugia, Italy.
"Seminal go-to book on not just ethics and journalism theories and its specifics in Eastern Europe but also the challenging realities: of digitization, citizen journalism, media systems, digital public and digital public media, but also disinformation, smear campaigns and other anomalies that affect journalism in Easter Europe--but also elsewhere."--Prof. Marko Milosavljevic, Department of Journalism, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This book takes a 360° approach to addressing the contemporary challenges facing professional journalism, from economic constraints and audience fragmentation to disinformation and the question of what constitutes morally right or wrong behaviour. Both journalists and scholars can learn a great deal from these highly experienced academic writers.--Josef Trappel, Professor for media policy and media economics at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria.

"Timely and incisive, written in an elegant and informative style, this book is a slow, delightful read on journalism ethics. Drawing on historical cases and today's examples, it guides readers in understanding how the media mirrors broader societal challenges that reshape how news is created, shared, and consumed."--Aukse Balčytiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania.

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].