ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the concept of media pluralism has been used, operationalized and exposed during the accession process in European media policy. It observes three dimensions in this respect: vocabulary used in particular standards promoted within a policy of conditionality, a way of reasoning and development of a monitoring process itself. The inclusion of the post-enlargement period provides a possibility to analyze European Union (EU) rule transfer and transposition of EU standards in Central European (CE) institutional structures and political practices in the context of current policy change concerning media pluralism at the European level. The chapter focuses on the fifth 2004 eastward enlargement and includes examples from the following CE countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. It argues that problematization of media pluralism during the EU accession lacked distinct visibility and a clear message, thus resulting in the ambiguity of language and ambivalence of the policy-making process.
