Strengths and weaknesses of the church media in Slovakia

Abstract

The author analyses strong and weak points of the Church media in Slovakia. Her conclusions are based on more than ten previous researches in the field of Church and media, realized on the Catholic University in Ruzomberok, Slovakia. She states, that Slovak church media are exclusively pastoral, wilfully resigning to the evangelization function. Marginal evangelization attempts (such as in Radio Lumen in the late 1990s) have failed. This means, inter alia, that they do not do journalism in its original sense. They act as public relations bodies of the bishop’s conferences and as an extension of spiritual service of the church to the believers. The competent decision-makers (i.e. church hierarchy) are not willing to subsidize evangelization medium, because the currently accepted doctrine is to use ‘their own’ media space to spread ‘their own’ messages. Thus, opening complex topics, covering opinion plurality and encouraging discussion, is regarded as harmful. This function is, in the last years, substituted by the commercial project of the Conservative daily Postoj, but this is neither a church nor religious medium. As the researches show, also the request of believing audience for independent critical Church medium is disputable. The audience is – disregarding age – divided between the audience of the official church media and decent secular media. Between these two groups exists a relatively strong antagonism