New Legal Regulation of Publications in Slovak Media Environment

Abstract

The study deals with the legal regulation of publications in the Slovak Republic, noting the position of publishers and web portal operators in the context of the new law ‘on publications’. This law specified publishers and operators as participants in the media market, defined community media, and established modern regulatory elements, including self-regulation, which have brought significant transparency to the ownership and financing of print and web media. In this study, we note the historical outline of the development of the press after 1989, the stabilisation of the situation within the legislative regulation of the press in 2008, while our primary objective is to define the current legal standards of the newly adopted Publications Act. We also reflect on the possible risks and problems that the new law entails, but our main aim is to present the fundamental and innovative changes that have resulted from several years of legislative process in the field of media law.