Slovak Television and Radio (STVR)

Slovak Television and Radio (Slovenská televízia a rozhlas, STVR) is Slovakia’s national public broadcaster. It replaced Radio and Television Slovakia (RTVS) on 1 July 2024 under legislation adopted by the governing coalition of Smer, Hlas and the Slovak National Party (SNS).

Media assets

Television: Jednotka, Dvojka, :24 and Šport.

Radio: Rádio Slovensko, Rádio Regina, Rádio Devín, Rádio_FM, Patria, Rádio RSI, Rádio Litera and Rádio Junior.

Digital: stvr.sk, spravy.stvr.sk, live television and radio streams, on-demand audiovisual services and online programme archives.

Rádio Pyramída, a digital service carrying archival material from the Slovak Radio archive on the DAB+ multiplex and by satellite, ceased broadcasting on 28 February 2025, with part of its content transferred to Rádio Litera.

Ownership and governance

STVR is governed by Act No. 157/2024 Coll. on Slovak Television and Radio, adopted by the National Council on 20 June 2024 and effective from 1 July 2024. The Act dissolved RTVS and terminated the mandates of its Director-General and Council.

The Act establishes a nine-member STVR Council. The Minister of Culture appoints and dismisses four members, three of them experts in media and audiovisual matters, economics, law or information technology, and one an economics expert proposed by the Minister of Finance, each selected through a tender. The National Council elects and dismisses the remaining five by a majority of the members present, from candidates proposed by its committee, one expert each in television broadcasting, radio broadcasting, economics, law and information technology.

The Council elects and dismisses the Director-General by secret ballot, requiring a majority of all members, following a public hearing broadcast live. It elected Martina Flašíková Director-General on 12 May 2025 by secret ballot, with seven votes against two for Igor Slanina. The other candidates were Martin Jakubec, Peter Janků and Norbert Majer. She received the appointment decree on 13 May. The opposition protested against the exclusion of physical public attendance from the hearing; the Council maintained that an online audiovisual broadcast satisfied the statutory requirement of public access.

Following the death of Council Chair Jozef Krošlák on 5 July 2025, Deputy Chair Lukáš Machala, a senior official at the Ministry of Culture appointed to the Council by the minister, temporarily led the body and chaired nine of the fifteen sessions held in the months that followed. On 28 April 2026 the Council elected Peter Benčurík as Chair with seven of the nine votes, against two for Martin Daňko, for a term running to 27 April 2028. Benčurík is director of the section for art, creativity, media and copyright at the Ministry of Culture. Council member Igor Gallo, formerly chair of the RTVS Council, objected that a chair drawn from the ministry would prevent the Council from acting objectively, calling the election the definitive burial of public-service broadcasting and of STVR’s independence. Machala responded that Benčurík had not been a ministry employee when he was appointed to the Council. The Council’s nine members are Benčurík as chair, Machala as deputy chair, Marcel Behro, Martin Daňko, Igor Gallo, Eva Koprena, David Lindtner, Jarmila Mikušová and Juraj Štaffa.

The Ethics Commission is a nine-member advisory body to the Council, appointed by the Council chair from nominations made by bodies including churches, minority and disability representatives and the journalism self-regulatory body. It was constituted on 27 May 2025 by Chair Jozef Krošlák, with Ľubica Balgová, Jana Barčák Filipová, Maroš Berák, Eduard Chmelár, Adrián Klimo, Magdaléna Kmeťková, Peter Pašuth, Maroš Smolec and Ivana Štaturová as members. Chmelár, a political analyst and publicist, was nominated by the Council member David Lindtner. Nominations from the Slovak Syndicate of Journalists and the Syndicate of Independent Journalists could not be accepted because the Act requires the press nominee to come from a nationwide self-regulatory body for journalistic ethics, and nominations from churches and youth organisations also failed to meet the statutory requirements, so the Council selected those members itself. The Commission advises on the compliance of STVR staff and collaborators with professional and ethical standards; its members are appointed under the statutory system rather than elected by newsroom professionals.

Forty-six members of the National Council challenged the Act before the Constitutional Court. On 11 February 2026 the court suspended the proceedings in case PL. ÚS 10/2024 and referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The referred questions concern the procedures for selecting the Director-General and Council members, the eligibility of candidates and the reasoning required for their appointment and dismissal; whether the method of constituting the Council sufficiently guarantees its members’ independence from the executive; whether the rules governing the Ethics Commission and the Act’s guarantees of editorial independence comply with the European Media Freedom Act; and whether the creation of STVR in place of the previous broadcaster, before the Act became applicable, may conflict with the Treaty on European Union.

Source of funding and budget

The licence fee was abolished in 2023 and the broadcaster depends on an annual contribution from the state budget. The government reduced the contribution from 0.17 per cent to 0.12 per cent of gross domestic product in December 2023.

In the state budget framework for 2026 the statutory contribution of 0.12 per cent of GDP accounts for EUR 157 million and STVR’s own revenues for EUR 21.3 million, including EUR 19.1 million from advertising, within an allocation of EUR 178.3 million.

STVR’s own approved budget for 2026 adds resources carried forward from previous years. It plans to draw EUR 24.2 million carried forward, giving total resources of EUR 202.465 million and total expenditure of EUR 202.265 million, comprising current expenditure of EUR 189.375 million and capital expenditure of EUR 12.890 million, with a planned cash surplus of EUR 200,000. A first amendment to the 2026 budget raises total resources to EUR 206.994 million and planned expenditure to EUR 206.794 million, largely reflecting additional payments carried forward from 2025.

For 2027 the draft budget allocates almost EUR 185 million, within EUR 249.7 million set aside for public-law institutions. The statutory contribution of 0.12 per cent of GDP is put at EUR 164 million and own revenues at EUR 20.1 million, including EUR 17.1 million from advertising. The transfer rises by EUR 6.9 million year on year in line with GDP growth.

Editorial independence

STVR dismissed about 60 of its roughly 1,700 employees in March 2026, with the first notices sent on 20 March. The Bratislava Labour Office shortened the statutory review period for mass dismissals from 30 days to 19. Those dismissed included nine editors, among them two senior journalists, nineteen dramaturges and chief dramaturges, a music dramaturge and a conductor, as well as camera operators, technicians, economists and a property manager. Named departures included Tomáš Bartoněk, head of Rádio Junior, the publicist Soňa Gyarfašová, the editor Rozália Vlasková and the Rádio Devín presenters Zuzana Golianová and Andrea Makýšová Volárová. Several of those listed had been active in a strike committee, and signatories of Charter 77 sent an open letter to the Director-General describing the dismissals as power purges.

Five organisations acting through the Media Freedom Rapid Response (the International Press Institute, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the European Federation of Journalists, Free Press Unlimited and Article 19 Europe) stated on 8 April 2026 that the planned dismissal of about 60 staff, including journalists who had criticised the management and the restructuring, appeared discriminatory and retaliatory and aimed at consolidating further government control over STVR. They called on the management to refrain from discriminatory dismissals of journalists involved in union activity or critical of the reforms, and on the European Commission to assess the developments under the European Media Freedom Act, noting that Slovakia is in pre-infringement dialogue with the Commission.

MEMO 98 monitored the principal evening news programmes of STVR and three commercial broadcasters in November 2025 and February 2026. Its November findings identified a predominance of government and governing-coalition coverage across the four broadcasters, with about 50 cases of problematic reporting, most often a lack of balance and context, and recorded Median SK polling showing perceived objectivity falling from 27.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 to 18.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2025. In the second period, from 2 to 15 February 2026, the government and governing parties received 71.3 per cent of political coverage on STVR, the second-highest share after TV Markíza on 74.2 per cent, with 50.3 per cent devoted to the government and the Prime Minister. STVR was the only broadcaster examined in which positive coverage of the government exceeded negative coverage, at 9.8 per cent against 6.2 per cent, the remaining 83.9 per cent being neutral, against 6.6 per cent positive and 20.5 per cent negative on TV Markíza and 3.4 per cent against 16.3 per cent on TV JOJ. The researchers recorded more than 25 professional shortcomings at STVR, the most of any broadcaster examined, principally missing context and political imbalance.

STVR commissioned an assessment from Media Tenor covering September to November 2025, reported on 16 February 2026 as examining 716 political contributions longer than 30 seconds with a national political focus, together with twelve editions each of O 5 minút 12 and Sobotné dialógy, and as finding no conflict with balance in 93.9 per cent of those contributions. STVR said the analysis confirmed that it meets its statutory mission.

On 24 April 2026 Via Iuris, MEMO 98, Transparency International Slovensko and Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint with the Council for Media Services and the STVR Council alleging that STVR had failed to provide impartial and pluralistic news, in breach of the Act on Media Services, the STVR Act and the European Media Freedom Act. The complaint drew on MEMO 98 monitoring of November 2025 and February 2026, including coverage of the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and on separate Transparency International monitoring of STVR’s main news programme in July, October and November 2025. The complainants cited one-sided airtime, the absence of opposing voices and experts, reliance on government statements without context, and questionable story placement and framing. The submission identified 25 problematic contributions across the two monitoring months.

At its session of 7 July 2026 the Council for Media Services opened proceedings against Jednotka over the item Ministerstvá cenzurovali príspevky in Správy of 19 November 2025, for a possible breach of the duty to ensure objective and impartial news, and rejected the remainder of that complaint as unfounded. The complainant organisations described the decision as evasive, noting that the Council acknowledged problematic handling in eight further programmes of the fifteen assessed but declined to open proceedings on the statutory threshold, and that in at least two cases it held that STVR had balanced the lack of impartiality elsewhere, departing from its earlier practice of assessing each news programme on its own. The preparatory material of the Council’s office had identified two programmes as potentially unlawful and six as problematic, and one of the three senate members proposed proceedings in four cases; neither position appeared in the final decision. The STVR Council discussed the complaint at three sessions between April and June without adopting a formal position, devoted about three minutes to it at the June session at which it was formally on the agenda, and on 7 July sent the complainants an unsigned and undated document endorsing the broadcaster’s position and invoking its dramaturgical freedom. The Council member David Lindtner, who also advises the Prime Minister, repeatedly accused the complainant organisations of political and ideological activism during the discussions.

The regulator’s examination of STVR in 2026 extends beyond that complaint. At the same session of 7 July it issued a warning to Rádio Regina Východ over Klub komunálnej politiky of 29 October 2025, finding that critical statements about the restoration of Krásna Hôrka castle were not adequately balanced; opened proceedings against Rádio Slovensko over a Spravodajský vstup of 17 May 2026 and against Jednotka over Reportéri of 20 April 2026, in both cases for a possible failure of objectivity and impartiality; stopped proceedings concerning a Správy :24 item of 26 September 2025; and rejected as unfounded complaints about Reportéri of 18 May 2026 and a Správy item of 10 May 2026. At its session of 17 June 2026 it issued a warning to Jednotka over the Správy item Spor pre výrub stromov of 13 October 2025, which presented claims against a businessman as facts without naming sources or affording him adequate room to respond; opened proceedings against STVR 24 over Odpovede s Ankou Žitnou of 5 November 2025 and against STVR over the provision of multimodal access to its television services between January and March 2026; and rejected as unfounded complaints about Do kríža of 12 November 2025 and two further items of 23 April 2026. These are distinct matters and do not together constitute a single adjudicated finding of pro-government bias.

The European Commission records for 2026 that amendments to the Act on Media Services expanded the competences of the Council for Media Services, including monitoring the public broadcaster’s compliance with the rules securing its independence and monitoring the allocation of public funds for state advertising. No progress was recorded on the Commission’s earlier recommendation.

A bill tabled by SNS members on 7 November 2025 would have replaced the nine-member Council for Media Services with a single-headed National Media Office whose chair would be elected and dismissed by parliament for a six-year term. The European Commission recorded that stakeholders considered the draft to risk imperilling the independence of the regulator, that the regulator’s Director was dismissed in January 2026 in circumstances it described as controversial. The bill passed its first reading in February 2026 and then stalled; SNS withdrew it from parliament in early September 2026, with Roman Michelko stating that there was no political agreement to carry it through. A revised bill has not been ruled out.

AI and digital policy

No publicly available STVR newsroom policy specifically governing the use, verification and disclosure of generative artificial intelligence in journalism was located for this update.

The STVR Council approved the draft 2026 budget and tasked the Director-General with preparing a concept for an internet streaming service, reported in December 2025. No launch date, deadline or dedicated budget for the service was stated.

Classification rationale

STVR remains classified State-Controlled (SC).

The broadcaster is governed through institutions constituted by the executive and the parliamentary majority. Four of the nine Council members are appointed and dismissed by the Minister of Culture and five are elected and dismissed by the National Council; the Council appoints and dismisses the Director-General and its chair appoints the Ethics Commission. In April 2026 the Council elected a director of a section of the Ministry of Culture as its chair, its deputy chair is a senior ministry official, one member advises the Prime Minister, and the Ethics Commission includes a nominee of that member, appointed after statutory nominations from two journalists’ organisations could not be accepted. No seat is reserved for nomination outside the executive and the parliamentary majority.

STVR is predominantly publicly funded. The statutory contribution of EUR 157 million in 2026 is the predominant part of its ordinary financing, alongside commercial income and resources carried forward from previous years, and places direct state support well above the threshold of 50 per cent of annual budget at which the typology treats an outlet as predominantly state-funded. The contribution is fixed by a formula that parliament reduced from 0.17 to 0.12 per cent of GDP.

The editorial evidence is cumulative rather than adjudicated. Independent monitoring has recorded recurring problems with impartiality, the selection and framing of news and the presentation of government positions.

October 2026