The project is realized by a group ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association). This community deals with research, development and quality of communication and higher education in Europe.
In the last years, ECREA collected materials for publication “ECREA BOOK SERIES 2015” in order to contribute the study of Foreign Pan-European Correspondents. This study maps the work of foreign correspondents in various European capitals, focusing on the number, background, job, working conditions, relationships with local structures and their role in creating the European image.
Contribution of ´School of communication and media´ deals with the foreign correspondents research in Slovakia. The final study was successfully commented by experts and send to project coordinator.
Its title is Foreign Correspondents in Slovakia: Economy, Minorities and Sometimes Politics and has been published in a book Mapping Foreign Correspondence in Europe, in November 2014 v by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2015 Taylor & Francis
an example:”
Who are the country’s Foreign Correspondents [FC] and who do they work for?
The number and status of FCs based in Slovakia is not very high. As a small and relatively new country, Slovakia initially lacked permanent offices of major news agencies, and even today, its presence on the foreign media landscape is uneven. Until 1998, only two major international news agencies had their correspondents in Slovakia: Reuters and Associated Press. Apart from this, a journalist from the Slovak daily Pravda worked as a stringer for the AFP.Since 1999, most major news agencies (except Chinese) established their permanent offices in Slovakia, as well as two agencies specializing in financial news reporting: Bloomberg and Bridge. It is almost impossible to identify all foreign correspondents reporting from or on Slovakia. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in Slovakia keeps a list of the officially accredited foreign correspondents in the country. However, as I found out, this list does not cover the majority of journalists actually working as foreign correspondents in Slovakia. The list of accredited foreign journalists includes 13 journalists, with some duplicity for certain agencies, and includes rather bizarre agencies like Agentura DADU (for which we could not find its own webpage). I believe there are some 20 foreign correspondents covering Slovakia. In general, one can conclude that there are two groups of foreign – or better said – international correspondents in Slovakia. The larger group consists of those who are permanently or temporarily based and reside in the country. More than half of them are local journalists (mostly native Slovaks, ethnic Czechs or ethnic Hungarians). Some of these journalists are accredited through the MFA; however, it was virtually impossible to contact them based on the official limited data from the MFA. Then there is a second group of foreign correspondents who report about Slovak issues, but reside in one of the neighbouring countries, with their base being, in most cases, Budapest, or Prague. Be that as it may, it is possible that most correspondents from the above-mentioned subgroup (accredited journalists with MFA) belong to this category as well. This means that it appears the majority of journalists accredited by MFA actually reside abroad.