Before the independence from the Soviet Union (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.
During the period of transition to democracy (1988-1990) Sąjūdis published several newspapers, both national and local,[3] establishing the basis of a diversified media landscape.
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.
Between 2018 and 2021, the audience of most popular issues has nearly halved, while the number of Lithuanian print newspapers has been continuously decreasing since the Great Recession.
The main remaining dailies are Lietuvos rytas, Vakaro žinios and Kauno diena[7] and their audience is mostly represented by older people.
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 competition for the advertising revenue that characterizes all the Lithuanian media landscape also applies to the radio sector, making it economically unstable.
The Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT), financed by state budget, became public in 1990 and joined the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) three years later.
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.
[19] 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.
During 2014 and 2015, Rossija RTR (previously [RTR-Planeta]); [NTV] Mir; TVCi, [PBK Lithuania] and [REN TV] were 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.
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.
There have been some instances in Lithuania when journalists lost their job positions in the mainstream media due to providing alternative views to the audience or raising uncomfortable questions for political figures.
[35][36] 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.
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.