Tag: slovenia

Media Watchdogs Warn of ‘Hostile Climate’ for Slovenia’s Press

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The International Press Institute said on Tuesday that it has joined four other media watchdog organisations in writing to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to express concerns over a decline in press freedom in Slovenia since the government of Janez Jansa came to power.

“We believe the repeated denigration of journalists, combined with the ruling party’s attempts to exert greater control over the country’s public service media, are creating an increasing hostile climate for critical reporting which serves its fundamental role of holding the government to account,” the five organisations said in the letter.

They claimed that as prime minister, Jansa has increasingly employed “Trumpian style tactics” of attacking journalists on Twitter and dismissing critical reporting as “fake news”, but warned that these attacks “go well beyond mere rhetoric”.

The letter was signed by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the European Federation of Journalists, OBC Transeuropa and Reporters Without Borders as well as the International Press Institute.

The Slovenian Government Communication Office, UKOM, faced strong criticism in February after it announced that it will suspend payment for the services provided by the Slovenian Press Agency, STA in January – the second time it has suspended the state-funded STA’s payments in recent months.

In the coming months, the media watchdog organisations’ letter said, the European Commission must respond publicly to any future attacks on the media by Jansa.

“It is vital for press freedom and democracy in the EU that Slovenia does not follow further down the illiberal path forged by Hungary and Poland,” they stated.

The problems facing media freedom in Slovenia, together with the situation for the press in Poland and Hungary, was discussed at the European Parliament’s plenary session last week.

Jansa’s policies could attract greater international attention in the second half of this year, when Slovenia will hold the presidency of Council of the European Union.

Jansa denies restricting media freedoms, and wrote a letter to von der Leyen in late February to insist that the allegations are “absurd”.

Slovenia Criticised for Suspending National News Agency’s Funding

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The Slovenian Government Communication Office, UKOM, has faced strong criticism after it announced this week that it will suspend payment for the services provided by the Slovenian Press Agency, STA in January – the second time it has suspended the state-funded STA’s payments in recent months.

“This is the most blatant example of the goals and strategies of [Prime Minister] Janez Jansa to get all the media under control,” prominent Slovenian investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga told BIRN.

“The Slovenian Press Agency is actually the backbone of the Slovenian media system because it covers many events in politics and society that other media do not cover… everything depends on the STA,” Zgaga said.

He added that if the agency falls under political control, right-wing premier Jansa will have a greater influence on all the other media that depend on the material provided and events organised by the STA.

UKOM told BIRN on Thursday that it has not stopped funding the STA but it has only “refused to pay the invoice that STA Director Bojan Veselinovic sent to UKOM for reasons unknown to us”.

It said that “as of 31 December 2020 all the contracts concluded between UKOM and STA expired”.

Veselinovic has argued that the budget allocations for funding the STA had already been set out by the government for this year, regardless of whether a contract with the founder has been signed or not, and that all required documents are always available to the government and relevant supervisory bodies.

UKOM also told BIRN that it rejects “any bizarre allegations of anyone ever exerting pressure on STA editors or journalists”.

It said it had asked STA director Veselinovic to “publish the names of the officials who are believed to have pressured the editors or journalists, because that would be unacceptable. So far, we have not received any reply.”

UKOM also refused to pay monthly instalments for the public service provided by the STA for October and November.

Veselinovic responded by arguing that the budget allocations for funding the STA had already been set out by the government for this year, regardless of whether a contract with the founder has been signed or not, and that all required documents are always available to the government and relevant supervisory bodies.

The Slovene Association of Journalists, DNS, the European Alliance of News Agencies, EANA, and the International Press Institute, IPI, voiced support for STA.

“The latest denial of funding of STA by the Slovenian government is yet another politically-motivated attempt to destabilize the financial footing of the country’s press agency. Payment should be resumed immediately,” the IPI wrote on Twitter.

BIRN asked UKOM to respond to its critics’ accusations but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.

STA employees said in a statement on Thursday that the UKOM’s decision is another “attempt to dismantle and destroy” the agency and that they “cannot agree to any diktats about how and what to report”.

They also said that a group of individuals, about whom it was “clear at first glance which political party they belong to”, have even announced the establishment of an alternative national news agency “which would be more Slovenian and objective than the STA”.

Last month Slovenian media reported the establishment of the new National Press Agency, NTA, whose founders are close to the Jansa’s right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS.

Zgaga said that “we can imagine one scenario, in which they [the government] will cut off the STA’s funding, the STA will go down, then they will give a lot of money to this new agency”.

Slovenian and international press freedom watchdog organisations have already accused Jansa of using the coronavirus pandemic to restrict media freedoms.

His policies could attract greater international attention in the second half of this year, when Slovenia will hold the presidency of Council of the European Union.

But in a letter on Friday to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Jansa said the allegations that he has been restricting media freedoms are “absurd”.

Slovenia Govt Condemned for Cutting Funds to Public News Agency

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The Slovene Journalists’ Association, DNS, said on Tuesday it was “appalled” by the government decision to stop funding the Slovenian Press Agency, STA, the independent public news agency, allegedly because it did not file the requested documentation to the Government Communications Office, UKOM.

“This is yet another attempt to destroy the national press agency, which is a pillar of high-quality and unbiased reporting. We have seen the same thing happen in neighbouring Hungary,” the DNS said in a press release.

As local media – but not the government press release – reported on Tuesday, the UKOM informed the government of Janez Jansa that it was unable to implement a contract with the STA for the rest of this year or conclude a contact for next year.

The STA as a result has not received any monthly compensation for October from UKOM, which its leadership says threatens its future, and is a serious threat to media pluralism and media freedom.

BIRN asked UKOM to respond to these accusations but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.

However, UKOM director Uros Urbanija told public television on Tuesday that there had been “no decision to stop funding the STA”, and that UKOM had only informed the government about the impossibility of financing the agency because it “did not get the information we need to be able to verify the credibility and sustainability of [STA’s] funding”.

The pensioners’ party, DeSUS, a partner in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Jansa, on Twitter on Tuesday “demand the immediate withdrawal of the decision, by which, without prior and reasoned discussion, the government is strongly interfering in the media space”.

The DNS claims that, as the founder of the agency, the Republic of Slovenia is required by law to finance the agency.

The STA said on Tuesday that the UKOM decision was preceded by a series of letters addressed to the director and Supervisory Board since mid-October, and was responding to it “in a manner and within the scope envisaged by the legislation”, but that some questions submitted by the UKOM have no legal basis.

“In the letters, UKOM demanded a series of explanations: from content-related questions about the journalistic work of the STA editorial board and specific news content and responses to that content which run against the editorial autonomy provided by law; to issues related to business operations, which are, in accordance with the ZSTAgen [Slovenian Press Agency Act], supervised by the Supervisory Board of the STA,” the agency said.

Some observers suggest that Jansa’s right-wing government is dissatisfied with the STA’s reporting during the pandemic, as it gave more space to anti-government protests than to government and prime ministerial appearances.

But the DNS defended its work. With its news wire, live streamed press conferences and radio news service, “the STA has made it significantly easier for journalists to access information at a time when they have had to work remotely, due to various restrictions”, the DNS said.

A number of local and international press freedom watchdog organizations have accused Jansa of using the pandemic to restrict media freedoms and make often personal attacks on journalists.

Jansa is Eroding Press Freedom in Slovenia, IPI Warns

Posted on by BIRD

Slovenia is among the few countries in Europe that have experienced a swift downturn in press and media freedom, according to the latest report of the International Press Institute, IPI, a global network of journalists, editors and media executives defending press freedom.

Jamie Wiseman, Advocacy Officer at IPI, stated in the in-depth report published on Tuesday that the Slovenian government led by Janez Jansa was contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists.

The IPI report noted that, according to some observers, Jansa has launched “vitriolic attacks on reporters on Twitter, enabling a wider increase in digital harassment from online trolls and contributing to an increasingly hostile climate for watchdog journalism”.

Jansa, an ally of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, returned for a third stint as prime minister on March 13, a little over a week after Slovenia confirmed its first case of the coronavirus. He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January.

The change of power coincided with what the IPI said is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.

Jansa has taken to Twitter to denounce the Slovenian public broadcaster; his government has sought to portray mainstream media outlets as heirs of the Yugoslav-era communist security services, while the government’s Crisis Headquarters, tasked with coordinating the fight against COVID-19, has retweeted anonymous attacks on the investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.

As IPI recalled, in mid-March, a government account retweeted a claim that Zgaga was an “escaped psychiatric patient”. Shortly after that, the reporter began receiving numerous online death threats and smears, drawing condemnation from international organisations.

Observers and journalists told IPI that “animosity from officials has enabled increasing harassment of journalists online”, from which neither foreign journalists nor public television journalists were spared.

Despite reasons for worry, Wiseman wrote that “concerns that Slovenia will become another illiberal democracy akin to Hungary are, for now, premature”.

”Nonetheless the exporting of Hungarian methods to Slovenia and other states in Central and South-Eastern European countries should worry EU leaders,” he continued, urging the EU and other organisations to follow developments in Slovenia closely and react strongly if need be.

“In the coming weeks, all eyes will be focused on the end of the public consultation into the legislative amendments to the public broadcaster and press agency,” the report noted, referring to plans by Slovenia’s government to amend public service media legislation, which some experts see as an attempt to rein in state media.

On the other hand, the Slovenian Culture Ministry told BIRN in July that nothing in the set of laws indicates that public media will be put under direct state influence. “The laws are not changing corporate or programming governance of RTV Slovenia, nor do they have provisions to do that,” it pointed out.

On August 25, the government responded to an alert on the Council of Europe’s platform, which monitors press freedom, issued in May, attaching Jansa’s own essay, “War with the media”, and offered additional explanations, insisting that “freedom of expression is a right that belongs to every individual”.

“Negative criticism of an individual journalist, publisher or broadcaster by the prime minister, does not automatically render it an attack or an encroachment on media independence,“ the letter said.

“Finally the World Press Freedom Index, published annually by international non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, ranks Slovenia 32nd, which is two places better than in 2019 and the same as in 2018,” the government observed.

‘It’ll be Bloody’: Under Jansa, Troubled Times for Slovenian Media

Posted on by BIRD

The spread of COVID-19 and the return to power of veteran right-winger Janez Jansa are contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists in Slovenia, media watchdogs are warning.

Jansa, an anti-immigration ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, returned for a third stint as prime minister on March 13, a little over a week after Slovenia confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus that has since killed 79 people in the former Yugoslav republic.

He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January. The change of power coincided with what the International Press Institute, IPI, says is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.

Jansa himself has taken to Twitter to denounce the Slovenian public broadcaster; his government has sought to portray mainstream media outlets as heirs of the Yugoslav-era communist security services, while the government’s Crisis Headquarters tasked with coordinating the fight against COVID-19 has retweeted anonymous attacks on investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.

“This is, in a way, a defeat in the field of democracy,” said Slovenian political scientist Alem Maksuti. “[Slovenian] media are coming under tremendous pressure, while like any other media they must simply objectively inform the public what’s going on.”

“And once again this thesis has emerged that authoritarian regimes which want to establish greater power are taking on those who have different opinions,” Maksuti told BIRN.

Governments exploiting pandemic to curb media freedoms


A cyclist wearing protective mask passes in the almost empty Preseren square, in Ljubljana. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

In mid-March, Zgaga, an investigative reporter and correspondent for the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, complained to IPI that he had been the target of a smear article in a news weekly close to Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, after he had asked the government about the operations and structure of a newly-founded Crisis Headquarters created by the government to lead the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Headquarters did not respond. Instead, its official Twitter account retweeted an anonymous attack on Zgaga describing him as having “escaped from quarantine” and carrying a “COVID-Marx/Lenin virus,” a play on a common smear by the Slovenian right-wing against its opponents on the left or centre. Zgaga also received anonymous, online death threats.

On April 17, RSF and six other press freedom organisations urged the European Commission – the executive arm of the European Union, of which Slovenia is a member – to do everything in its power to guarantee the safety of the Zgaga and ensure that “death threats and attacks against him are treated with the utmost seriousness by the Slovenian authorities.”

“Despite the unprecedented context in which Slovenia and other countries currently find themselves, the COVID-19 crisis shouldn’t be an excuse to prevent journalists from doing their job,” RSF said, echoing the deep concern felt by media watchdogs over press freedoms across Central and Eastern Europe since the onset of the pandemic.

‘Unjustified attacks’ on public broadcaster


Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology Zdravko Pocivalsek speaks to the media during the reception of the first batch of a seven-ton shipment of personal protection equipment from Quingdao, China. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

Zgaga, however, was not the only target.

On March 20, the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists reported that Jansa had used social media to accuse public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Slovenija, RTVS, of spreading lies about the government. He issued a veiled threat over its funding.

RTVS Director General Igor Kadunc denounced what he said were “grossly unjustified attacks” on RTVS coverage aimed to the “subordination of the central media to one political option.”

Spela Stare, secretary general of the Slovene Association of Journalists, DNS, noted that at the outset of the pandemic, the government had sought to halt journalists from asking questions at its regular COVID-19 press conferences. RTVS was supposed to simply broadcast the statements of speakers.

“Journalists could only send the questions in advance via email. No real-time questions,” Stare told BIRN. “We protested, of course, and demanded at least video conferences for questions.”

The government backed down, to a degree, allowing journalists to pose questions from a separate location or submit them in advance.

“Not ideal, but better than what was first announced,” Stare said, while noting that the opportunity for follow-up questions had clearly become limited.

For Slovenian media, trouble ahead


Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Not long after the protest from the Council of Europe’s protection of journalism platform, a reply appeared on the platform’s site from Slovenia’s mission to the CoE, questioning the journalistic standards of Slovenian media and claiming that “the majority of the main media in Slovenia have their origins in the former Communist regime and even in the late 1990s the positions of editors-in-chief were held by the former members of the infamous security service UDBA.”

The Slovene Association of Journalists denounced the letter as having “no basis in reality.”

“It only reflects the ideological views of the biggest government party and smears Slovenia’s reputation internationally,” the association said.

Maksuti said the government was trying to “invent an enemy that has been dead for years – Communism.”

Foreign Minister Anze Logar defended the wording of the response, which he said was drawn up by a government communications office, telling parliament that the government had faced significant criticism in the media in its first month in office.

Journalists he ran into, Logar said, “do not seem scared… I did not see fear in their eyes.”

With the next parliamentary election due in 2022, Maksuti said the future of Jansa’s four-party coalition government was hard to predict.

“I think politics will be closer to what we can see in Hungary, Poland or Slovakia,” he said, “where some of the civilisational steps we’ve made are becoming issues again – abortion, same-sex marriage and so on.”

Jansa’s government is working on a package of laws, part of which Maksuti said may seek to abolish licence fees for the public broadcaster and give more prominence and improved frequencies to media seen, he said, as “party extensions” of Jansa’s SDS.

“In the media field, it’ll be bloody,” Maksuti said.

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