Journalists in Parliaments. Three cases concerning the accessibility of legislatures in Central Europe

Abstract

In modern legislatures, the public nature of political debates has been achieved as a constitutional principle. Constitutions and parliamentary standing orders provide with possibilities for journalists and media to access to sittings of the legislatures in order to offer the public the information on issues debated in parliament. Against this normative background, this paper introduces three cases (from Macedonia, Poland and Hungary) where journalists’ work have been limited in legislatures for several reasons. The paper considers also the competing values of freedom of information, freedom of expression visa-vis the dignity and undisturbed functioning of parliaments.