An expert commission has been established to prepare a Media strategy for the Ministry of Culture. To attain this objective, the expert commission organized a series of public discussions and a survey of the public opinion in this field. This program presents a report from the final public discussion which took place in the Ministry of Culture headquarters, focused largely on the autonomy of journalists, their social position, transparency of media ownership, insufficient role of regional and local media and the political independence of public media. The results of these discussions will be included in the forthcoming media strategy.
The only daily newspaper in Italian language La voce del popolo for the Italian minority in Croatia and Slovenia is facing great financial difficulties. Croatia's minister of culture Zlatko Hasanbegović has made public the list of media institutions that are to be funded by the ministry in the future. Among the listed, most of the left or liberal oriented media will receive fewer or no funds at all compared to past years. One of the newspapers that will suffer the most is La voce del popolo. Its importance goes beyond the content. Established by the Italian antifascists and partisans in 1944 in Rijeka, for more than 70 years it has been an essential element marking the existence of the Italian minority in Croatia as well as in Slovenia. Ministry of culture decided to slash the funding of Edit, publishing house responsible for publishing La voce del popolo. For the next year, it will receive half as much funds as it was receiving until now. The year after that, its funding from the Croatian state will be completely abolished. Underfunding of politically unfavorable media outlets is just the latest blatant attack on media freedom in Croatia.
Following the initiative of the Slovenian Union of Journalists and last year's widespread investigation in Slovene media companies, the parliamentary party Združena levica filed a legislative procedure for amending the Labour Inspection Act. Since the financial crisis in 2008 regular employment among journalists has fallen by 16%, while contract works have risen by 64%. Contract workers do not enjoy equal legal rights and protection (e.g. most media houses do not cover legal expanses for contract workers in case of their prosecution due to their reporting). The new law would allow Labour Inspectorate to have more power in punishing those media outlets employing contract workers to carry out full employment tasks, and allow for greater legal protection of contract workers.
The Programming Council of the Croatian public broadcaster (HRT) has decided to cease the broadcasting of the satirical program “Montirani proces”, because of its “inflaming religious and ethnic rhetoric”. The broad public following the program does not agree with this perspective, and see the reasons for its cessation to be elsewhere. In this program we discuss the possible other reasons for ceasing “Montirani proces” and the role of satire in Croatian media landscape.
The Croatian network E-net and nonprofit media have petitioned the prime minister of Croatia Tihomir Orešković to replace the minister of culture Zlatko Hasanbegović. During the first month in this position, the minister has adopted many questionable decisions, angering the public, and has now resolved all members of the Expert Committee for non-profit media from their duty. We discussed Hasanbegović's first moves with Željana Buntič Pejakovič from Cenzura plus and Saša Lekovič, president of Croatian Association of Journalists.
Serbian journalists have joined under the parole "Journalist don't kneel" against chauvinist declaration from public figures. The initiative follows the remarks addressed by the Defense minister to a journalist, asking her to knee in front of him. The broadcast discusses the protest and the state of journalism in Serbia, with journalists Zoran Nikolić and Stevan Vlajić and Zlatko Minić from Transperancy Serbia.
Labor inspectorate of Slovenia has launched a widespread investigation in Slovenian media companies. The most important part of the investigation relates to the violation of labor laws, especially the status of journalist who are full-time employed but are considered by employers as part-time employees.
The amendments to the Act on access to public information legalise the tendency of several public institution to charge for the costs of preparation of the copies of requested information. NGOs such as Transparency International and the Slovenian Association of Journalists criticise the new law that poses risks for media freedom and the work of journalists.
The end of the cooperation with the journalist Erik Valencic and the engagement of Bojan Traven, controversial figure known to the public for breaching the Slovene journalist's codex, by Slovenia's national public broadcasting company has sparked public outrage. The public is concernedh that these is an ideological sweeping and not due to professional standards, as claimed by the company.
