The Croatian government is looking to criminalize unauthorized leaks of material from criminal proceedings. While the authorities insist that the new law will protect the presumption of innocence, media professionals and numerous law experts decry the proposal, warning it will silence journalists and their potential sources. The outcry over the “anti-leak” legislation comes shortly after […]

The 2023 Slovak parliamentary election campaign made history, and not for the right reasons. For the first time, deepfakes played a role in the pre-election battle. Two days prior to the election, a video with an audio clip that allegedly featured Monika Tódová, a well-known journalist from independent news platform Denník N, and Michal Šimečka, […]

Robert Fico and his Smer party have returned to power in Slovakia. The politician who was forced to resign as prime minister after the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak in 2018 is back at the head of a new governing coalition creating deep unease among Slovakia’s journalists about the future for media freedoms and public […]

Press freedom in Romania is under renewed threat as political parties have been distorting journalism with tens of millions of euros of public money flowing into the media. Major political parties and Romanian media outlets have in recent years signed significant contracts for political advertising, though transparency mechanisms are lacking. The content paid by parties […]