ABSTRACT
The almost concurrent collapse of communist regimes in 1989–1992 and the ensuing transformations in the Baltics, East, Southeast, and Central Europe (BESCE), created a heretofore unavailable living laboratory for journalism and media studies. Additionally, it allowed for an examination of those issues that contribute to the ongoing debates about the nature, importance, and independence of the role(s) of journalism in aiding the establishment of democracies with the kind of sustained liberal values that make them equivalent to their Western brethren.
