Media of Lithuania
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Before the independence from the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
(USSR) in 1990, Lithuanian print media sector served mainly as a propaganda instrument of the Communist Party of Lithuania (LKP). Alternative and uncontrolled press began to appear in the country starting from 1988, when the Initiative Group of the Reform Movement of Lithuania Sąjūdis was established. After the declaration of independence the government stopped interfering in the media outlets which for the most part were first privatised to their journalists and employees and later to local businessman and companies. Currently media ownership in Lithuania is concentrated among a small number of domestic and foreign companies. In the context of
Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...
political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (profes ...
, conflict‑like reports dominate – that is, scandalous news. In 2017
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wil ...
defined Lithuania's press freedom status as “free", while the 2022 World Press Freedom Index prepared annually by
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
(RSF) states that journalists in Lithuania work in
"relatively favourable"
environment. RSF's Index ranks Lithuania 9th among 180 countries. A national survey conducted in October 2017 found that only 37.3% of respondents trust mass media.


Historical background

Although
Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
declared independence in 1990 - which was recognized by the
USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
one year later - alternative and uncontrolled press began to appear in the country starting from 1988, when the Initiative Group of the Reform Movement of Lithuania Sąjūdis was established. During the period of transition to democracy (1988-1990) Sąjūdis published several newspapers, both national and local, establishing the basis of a diversified media landscape. After the declaration of independence the government stopped interfering in the media outlets which for the most part were privatised to their journalists and employees. The number of newspaper titles in Lithuania rose sharply in 1990–1992 and assured its enormous diversity. In 1995 there were 477 newspaper titles. There was also a proliferation in the radio and television market. However, the economic recession in 1996 was followed by a decrease in the circulation of newspapers and journals. The Russian financial crisis in 1998 also affected negatively Lithuanian economy, hitting the capacity of the readers to buy newspapers that became prohibitively expensive for majority of population. The hundreds of joint stock companies that emerged in the first years of Lithuanian independence were first sold to local businessman and companies. These were then bought by large publishing companies or foreign investors by the end of the 1990s. Today a small number of domestic and foreign companies owns the media in Lithuania.


Media outlets


Print and internet media

The number of Lithuanian print newspapers has sharply decreased in recent years. Besides many that have closed, others have become weeklies. The main remaining dailies are Lietuvos rytas, Vakaro žinios and
Lietuvos žinios ''Lietuvos žinios'' (literally: ''News of Lithuania'') was a daily newspaper in Lithuania. Established in Vilnius in 1909, it was a liberal newspaper representing the Lithuanian Democratic Party. Even though its publication was interrupted by World ...
and their audience is mostly represented by older people. The decline in the number of print media is considered in line with a worldwide trend enhanced by the influence of the Internet and the social media. But it is also attributed to local factors such as the absence of well rooted instruments of trust building in the country's print media culture, as well as insufficient implementation of transparency standards and journalist ethics. The prevalence of political scandals and celebrities over analytical comments in the newspapers has also been under criticism for some time. The Internet media is widely diffused also due to the high number of Internet users, accounted for 2.2 in 2016 - around 77% of the population. The rise of the Internet media was led by foreign-owned companies. Estonian media companies currently control the most influential Internet news portals in Lithuania. In 2014, the two most popular news portals, delfi.lt and 15min.lt, were owned by Estonian media companies Ekspress Group and Meedia.Ainius Lašas, Behind the storefront of democracy: The case of media–politics relations in Lithuania, in ''Journalism 1–18'' p. 15, 2017 Internet news media mainly depend on advertising revenue, while a number of them introduced fee-based news services. The business daily Verslo žinios/Business News was the first one to introduce fee-based news in 2002. The biggest national daily Lietuvos rytas introduced its subscription service in 2004.


Radio

There are overall 115
Radio broadcasting Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
stations airing in the five major Lithuanian cities (
Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...
;
Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...
; Klaipėda; Siauliai; Panevezis). Ten broadcasters air 13 national radio stations, 8 regional radio broadcasters air 39 radio stations and 29 broadcasters air 63 local radio stations. The majority of these radio broadcasters are commercial and are mostly small music and entertainment broadcasters. The competition for the advertising revenue that characterizes all the Lithuanian media landscape also applies to the radio sector, making it economically unstable.


Television

After 1990 Lithuanian
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
went through big changes like the rest of the
mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit information ...
. Foreign capital introduced by
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
,
Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
and Scandinavian countries contributed to this transformation. The
Lithuanian National Radio and Television Lithuanian National Radio and Television ( Lithuanian: Lietuvos nacionalinis radijas ir televizija) is a non-profit public broadcaster that has been providing regular radio services since 1926 and television broadcasts since 1957. LRT joined Euro ...
(LRT), financed by state budget, became public in 1990 and joined the
European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; french: Union européenne de radio-télévision, links=no, UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations whose countries are within the European Broadcasting Area or who ar ...
(EBU) three years later. It operates three national televisions, three radio channels and an internet portal. The Act amending the Law on the Lithuanian National Radio and Television that came into force in 2015 banned commercial advertising on all LRT radio and TV channels. The number of television channels has multiplied in recent years. Three out of four national TV stations have established their second channels, with the aim of covering the needs of different segments of society through different outlets. In 2016, there were 10 local television channels transmitted over the digital terrestrial TV stations, while the most popular television channels among TV viewers by time watched were TV3, LNK and LRT TELEVIZIJA.


News agencies

There are two national news agencies in Lithuania: ELTA (Lietuvos naujienų agentūra) and BNS ( Baltic News Service). Both of them are private companies based in
Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...
. BNS disseminates news in Russian and English (as well as the domestic languages of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian) via the internet and by other means. Subscribers include media, financial, industrial, and government institutions in the Baltic states. BNS was owned by the Finnish media group Alma Media from 2001 until March 2014 when it was sold to Uudisvoog OÜ, a company fully owned by the Estonian Ilmar Kompus who is also the owner of the
Sky Plus Sky Plus is a commercial radio station in Estonia.Sky Media
The radio station was launched in 1997 and is owned by joint-stock company A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company's capital stock, stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their share (finance), shares (certificates ...
. The major shareholder of ELTA is Respublikos Investicija, owned by Vitas and Justinas Tomkus.


Legal framework

In Lithuania legislation concerning the media is primarily represented by the Law on the Provision of Information to the Public, the Law on Telecommunications, and, the Law on Electronic Communications. The Law on the Provision of Information to the Public was amended in 2015 by Lithuanian authorities and introduced a penalty of up to 3% percent of a broadcaster’s annual income for spreading information that is considered war propaganda, encouragement to change the country’s constitutional order, or an encroachment on the country’s sovereignty to contrast hostile propaganda and disinformation. Several Russian television stations were taken to court by Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission (LRTK) on the basis of this law. During 2014 and 2015, Rossija RTR (previously TR-Planeta; TVMir; TVCi, BK Lithuaniaand EN TVwere found to have violated Lithuanian broadcasting regulations and temporarily suspended or fined. Trying to provoke tension and violence between Ukrainian and Russians, as well as against the European Union and NATO member states, were among the violations established by the authorities. In Lithuania, Russian programs make up 22 percent of total television broadcasting, as opposed to Lithuanian programs that make up 23 percent of it.


Censorship and media freedom

In 2017
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wil ...
defined Lithuania's press freedom status as “free", while the 2022 World Press Freedom Index prepared annually by
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
(RSF) states that journalists in Lithuania work in
"relatively favourable"
environment despite flaws in the legal system, financial issues and tensions with the government. According to RSF's Index the country is ranked 9th among 180 countries. Although the generally positive evaluation of Lithuania’s media freedom presented by international media watchdogs, in recent years there occurred a few episodes concerning censorship on media freedom. For instance public information about
LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people has been restricted in several occasions. The law was officially condemned by the
European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
. In November 2013 Lithuanian intelligence, the Special Investigation Service (SIS) raided the Baltic News Service (BNS) office in Vilnius. The SIS tried to compel the journalists of the news agency to reveal their sources after they reported that Lithuanian intelligence agents had information about Russian officials’ plans to launch smear campaign about Lithuanian President, Dalia Grybauskaite. Six journalists were questioned, computers were confiscated whilst the BNS editors' houses were also searched. Lithuanian intelligence recorded telephone conversations of the BNS employees within the pretrial investigation of the matter. The wiretapping was declared unlawful by Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, while president Grybauskaitė signed amendments to the Law on Provision of Information to the Public and to the Code of Criminal Procedure. The amendments established that prosecutorial procedures with the potential of impinging upon press freedom or individual rights can be only carried out in cases of great public interest. Another aborted censorship episode occurred at the end of 2016, when MPs of the Lithuanian Parliament unanimously voted to amend the country's Civil Code to limit the right to criticize public figures. The regulation has been opposed for its potential risk to deter the media from informing the public on pertinent issues. The law could not come into force because it was vetoed by Lithuanian president and the amendments were subsequently withdrawn by the Parliament.There have been some instances in Lithuania when journalists lost their job positions in the
mainstream media In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.Chomsky, Noam, ''"What makes mai ...
due to providing alternative views to the audience or raising uncomfortable questions for political figures. For example, journalists such as Rūta Janutienė, Viktoras Gerulaitis, or Vytautas Matulevičius eventually became outcasts in the mainstream media. As a result, they began establishing their own alternative media channels such as PressJazz TV or OpTV on
YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
to raise such problems as local political corruption, national authorities not protecting the interests of the state, shifts in geopolitics and environmental protection. They also invite various politicians and lawyers to back up their claims. There have been some concerns raised about mainstream media being biased towards political candidates during elections as some politicians were accused of being given far more representation in the media than others. In 2019, a presidential candidate professor Arvydas Juozaitis has expressed his discontent on air during the Presidential election debate on LRT and left the studio. However, others responded to this believing it to be a provocation. As of 2021, a survey regarding general public's trust of the media has been done, which indicated that 24.8% of the respondents trust the media while 33.4% don't—the lowest recorded percentage since 1998. According to Vladas Gaidys, this can mainly be attributed to mainstream media supporting the side of the government on such topics as the migrant border crisis caused by Belarus and vaccination policies for dealing with the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. According to the Lithuanian sociologist Professor Rūta Žiliukaitė, " en people feel like their voice is not being heard or their representation is overwhelmingly negative, we lose an opportunity of dialogue with those people. You can't call person a moron and expect that he will happily be willing to have a conversation with you."


Media ownership

Media ownership concentration has been increasing over the last several years due to the purchase of media outlets by domestic and foreign companies. Nonetheless national ownership prevails in the Lithuanian media because a number of foreign multinationals, in line with similar trends in the CEE region, decided to exit relatively small and volatile markets. For instance Norvegian Orkla Media (Norway’’s second largest media house) fully owned the newspaper Kauno dia until it sold it to Lithuanian Hermis Capital in 2007. Swedish Bonnier, which owns the business newspaper
Verslo žinios ''Verslo žinios'' (English: ''Business news'') is a leading Lithuanian business newspaper published in Vilnius since 1995 and online since 2001. Swedish Bonnier Business Press group holds a 73% stake in ''Verslo žinios''. The remaining owners ...
, was the main investor in the Lithuanian television market until Lithuanian MG Baltic Media purchased LNK in 2003. The country does not have a legislation for media market regulation or anti-monopoly law. Consequently, media monopoly and cross ownership are frequent as large sectors of the media belong to one single owner. This also leads to the dissemination of the same material in different outlets. Media companies have also been criticised for insufficient reporting to the Lithuanian Minister of Culture about their owners, although it is required by the law. Editors-in-chiefs are shareholders or owners of a number of news outlets while a considerable number of politicians and public servants own media tools. According to the Lithuanian office of Transparency International in 2016 there were 26 such owners. This is because politicians and public servants, who typically own regional media, continue to remain as media holders after their election to the Parliament or municipal councils.


See also

*
Telecommunications in Lithuania This article provides an overview of telecommunications in Lithuania, including radio, television, telephones, and the Internet. The Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania (RRT) is Lithuania's independent communications-i ...
*
Television in Lithuania Television in Lithuania was introduced in 1957. The following is a list of television channels broadcast in Lithuania. Main channels Regional channels Others Former channels See also * Media of Lithuania * Lists of television cha ...


References

{{Country topics, country = Lithuania
Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...