The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, welcomes the establishment of the IPI National Committee of Slovakia.

“IPI Slovakia” was founded in Bratislava on 23 September 2008, and its National Committee status was officially recognised by the IPI Executive Board on 8 November 2008 in Vienna, Austria. The Committee is chaired by Pavol Múdry, former director of the largest Slovak News Agency SITA and an IPI Board member. Múdry was also a member of IPI’s high-level mission to Slovenia in March 2008. Other founding members include Štefan Hríb, editor-in-chief of the Slovak weekly current affairs magazine Týždeň and host of the weekly National Radio discussion “Without the Lamp”, and Eva Babitzová, general director of Rádio Expres, Slovakia’s most listened-to radio broadcaster.

Through the establishment of an IPI National Committee, Slovakia joins a host of countries around the world. IPI National Committees actively pursue the aims of the institute in their countries, recruit new members for IPI, and report to the IPI secretariat on developments affecting the media. In a press statement issued at IPI Slovakia’s first General Assembly, the committee emphasised its determination to be a “guardian of the freedoms that we acquired in 1989, and that are severely undermined by several words and acts of power.”

In welcoming the establishment of IPI Slovakia, IPI Director David Dadge said the new national committee will no doubt help strengthen media freedom in Slovakia, “where the ‘right to reply’ law has shown that, while democracy flourishes, governments continue to think of new ways to censor the media.” He added, “IPI Slovakia can play its greatest role by growing a broad membership and convincing governments, through discussion and dialogue, to deal fairly with the media.”