Law Enforcement Tasks of the State and the Media

Abstract

The current essay is the first milestone of the research that aims to enlarge our knowledge about the relationship between policing and press. Like the significant part of traditional exploratory researches, this study also examines the subject in a historical perspective, which is the establishment f the police press in parallel with the institutional and legal domestic law enforcement, regulation of the press and freedom of speech.
    The complexity of the relationship between police and journalism is the fact that, while on the one hand, the state, – in constitutional conditions – acts as a law enforcement officer, the state police supervises the press for a long time (in Hungary as well), at the same time the police is a frequent topic on journalism. Publicity is a buffer zone, where the two institutions are in conflict, if not always a battlefield, but a kind of marketplace, where the need and obligation of public information and the intention of separation of the law enforcement agencies are seeking a fragile balance in a state power context.