Survey: Lithuanian businessmen fear media

  • 2007-06-13
  • By Arturas Racas
VILNIUS - Half of Lithuania's businessmen see the country's media as corrupt and an overwhelming majority believe that reports in newspapers and on television can completely destroy their businesses or personal lives, a new survey commissioned by the Lithuanian branch of the anti-corruption body Transparency International has revealed.

The poll, which was conducted by the RAIT company in April and May, showed that 91.1 percent of Lithuanian businessmen believe that unfavorable media publicity about an individual or company has the potential to ruin that individual or company. As many as 61.8 percent believe in this potential "wholeheartedly," while only 2.4 percent do not believe it at all.
Even more worrying, of the 502 CEOs and top executives surveyed, 66.1 percent said they consider Lithuanian media "corrupt" and 13.1 percent said it is "highly corrupt." To put this in perspective, the most corrupt public institution, in the opinion of the businessmen, is the government. The poll showed that 59.8 percent of businessmen consider it "corrupt," while 34.1 percent describe it as "highly corrupt."

However, the businessmen accepted that they themselves are no saints. Of the respondents, 57.8 percent consider Lithuanian business as "corrupt" and another 5 percent see it as "highly corrupt."
But when asked directly about this corruption, only 12.1 percent confessed to having made payments to media outlets in some way (in cash or via advertising) in return for good publicity.
"This [bribery] figure is almost the same as among firefighters, where the corruption index is around 13 percent. It is of course much better than in the police or in the health system, but I think that the figure is still too high," Rytis Juozapavicius, director of Lithuania's branch of Transparency International, told The Baltic Times. (See interview page 14.)
The survey also showed that national newspapers are seen as the most corrupt among Lithuania's media outlets. Of the businessmen polled, 65.9 percent labeled the national newspapers as "corrupt" and another 7.8 percent called them "very corrupt." The figures for regional newspapers were 52.2 percent and 8 percent respectively, and for national TV broadcasters 47.2 percent and 4 percent.

News agencies were seen as the most transparent media in Lithuania 's as many as 65.2 percent of those polled said they are not corrupt. The most transparent media outlets in Lithuania, according to those surveyed, are the Verslo Zinios national daily (81.6 percent labeled it "transparent" and 11.2 considered it "not transparent"), the Valstieciu Laikrastis weekly (77.8 and 14.8 percent respectively) and Baltic News Service news agency (70.3 and 7.4 percent).
The nation's largest dailies Respublika and Lietuvos Rytas, along with the LNK television channel, earned the highest percentage points for those who see them as "not transparent," scoring 56, 47.6 and 45.1 percent respectively.
The survey also showed that businessmen felt they do not have enough information about Lithuanian media outlets and that more than half of them believe that greater transparency among newspapers, TV channels and other forms of media could be ensured by disclosing information on their finances, management, circulation and audience.