Journalism Ethics in Eastern Europe

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].

“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 Milosavljević, 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.”—Auksė Balčytienė, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania.

• Introduction: Transformations Of Journalism In Eastern Europe; Normative Media Theories; Professional And Citizen Journalism; General Ethics And Journalism Ethics; Journalistic Standards; Media Systems And Journalistic Cultures In Eastern Europe; Anomalies Of Journalism In Eastern Europe; Smear Versus Scandal; False Versus Accurate News Stories; Concluding Remarks: Journalism Ethics And Media Policy; Glossary; Bibliography; Index