Beata Balogová

November 17, 2021

How Journalists Survived Backsliding and State Capture

Beata Balogová, editor-in-chief of SME, a major daily news site in Slovakia, delivered the 2021 Annual Freedom Lecture on November 17, 2021. Her lecture, presented virtually from Bratislava due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, was entitled “How Journalists Survived Backsliding and State Capture.” Her talk combined a history of threats to press freedoms during the Mečiar and Fico years in Slovakia, a personal account of her decision to become a journalist, and a warning that democratic institutions are again under attack in Central Europe.

Beata Balogová

Beata Balogová is the editor-in-chief of SME, a major daily and news site in Slovakia. An ethnic Hungarian living in Slovakia, Beata also writes columns and commentaries on politics, societal changes, press freedom, populism, and human rights. Prior to joining SME, between 2003 and 2014, Beata served as editor-in-chief of Slovakia’s English-language weekly The Slovak Spectator. Beata was awarded the European Press Prize in 2020 in the opinion category for her commentary “How we stopped being comrades.” She also is a three-time winner of the Novinárska cena, the Slovak national journalism prize. Beata became a journalist at the age of eighteen and since then she has been loyal to the profession and mission. She graduated from the School of Journalism of Columbia University in New York in 2007 with a MS degree. Beata was also a Fulbright scholar at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri Columbia in 1994. She holds an MA degree in journalism from Comenius University in Bratislava. Her book of essays – Book Full of People (Kniha plná ľudí) – was published in 2019. Beata is a member of the executive board of the International Press Institute (IPI), advocating media freedom in Central Europe.