Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini list three basic indexes of the level of journalistic professionalization: the autonomy, separate professional norms and service for public interest. The authors of Comparing media systems while defining the level of professionalization of journalistic cultures put emphasis on the independence of journalistic environment from external subjects, which are the elements of state administration. The bigger this independence is, both in defining the rules of behavior for media people as well as in controlling them, the bigger – in Mancini and Hallin’s opinion – is the level of professionalization. According to the researchers the level of autonomy is also one of the criterion for affiliation of individual media systems to one of three basic models. However, these researchers have not analyzed media systems in the countries of central and eastern Europe. Because of low level of autonomy of the institutions forming them, it seems that media systems in these countries resemble the most the Mediterranean Model in which the state still plays the most important role in regulating media market. This article aims at preliminary description of the level of autonomy in media systems in chosen countries of central and eastern Europe mainly through the characterization of their media accountability systems.
Keywords: autonomy, deontology of media, self-regulation of media, media accountability system, journalistic culture.