President’s exclusion of a newspaper he accuses of belonging to a hostile ‘cartel’ has drawn widespread condemnation.
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has been criticised for banning the daily Jutarnji list on Tuesday without any explanation from his press conference.
Hanza Media is the owner of several Croatian daily and weekly newspapers, including Jutarnji list, Slobodna Dalmacija and many others, which Milanovic has called “a cartel”.
“It’s not a media company, it’s a cartel. The government finances them, they have no shame, they organize a gypsy wedding in Split, not a Roma one. It’s not a media, so whoever writes there is not a journalist for me,” Milanovic said in response to a question asking why Jutarnji list was not allowed to attend the press event.
Milanovic was referring to the celebrations in Split of the 80th anniversary of Slobodna Dalmacija, which took place last month and was attended by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.
“I was shocked by the email message from the spokesperson of the President’s Office, Nikola Jelic, who simply wrote to me that my accreditation to follow the press conference of the President was not approved,” journalist Kresimir Zabec told Hina news agency.
“This is the first time that something like this has happened in my many years of journalistic work. No president, prime minister, minister, or state institution has ever done this, no matter how much they may not have agreed with my views,” Zabec added.
He added that he was worried by the President’s statement that he, Zabec, was not a real journalist. Who a journalist is, he said, should be judged by newsroom editors, not politicians.
“It is a terribly dangerous thesis for our work and for the whole of society that politicians say who is a journalist for them and who is not,” he said.
“During his mandate, President Milanovic has systematically attacked institutions, uses inappropriate vocabulary and encourages exclusivity and division in society. This kind of attack on independent media from a position of power deserves every condemnation,” the Minister of Culture and Media, Nina Obuljen Korzinek, said on Tuesday.
The President’s spokesman, Nikola Jelic, said on Tuesday that he was shocked by the message that Obuljen Korzinek had sent to journalists and the public.
“I am shocked by the message that the minister in charge of the media sends to journalists and the entire Croatian public when she assists the public political wedding of Plenkovic’s government and Hanza Media. From the position of decision-making power on (non)funding of the media, only the HDZ [the ruling Croatian Democratic Union] can defend the independence of the media so falsely,” Jelic wrote on Twitter.
Along with this message, he attached a photo from the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of Slobodna Dalmacija with Plenkovic and members of the government.
Maja Sever, president of the European Federation of Journalists, on Twitter, called the President’s ban “a completely unacceptable, undemocratic move … It is your job and your duty to answer to the public and the press.“
The president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, Hrvoje Zovko, also called it an unacceptable practice.