Members of the European Parliament who are also members of the Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group (DRFMG), which operates within the Parliamentary Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), held a unilateral debate on the media situation in Slovenia. The “expert” on the media, Marko Milosavljević, Ph.D., stood out in particular, as he lied and said that the current government dismissed the Director-General of RTV Slovenia, Igor Kadunc. Communication expert Edvard Kadič reacted sharply to Milosavljević’s words, demanding that Milosavljević be prosecuted for slandering the country abroad. “I hope that the state prosecutor will officially initiate the criminal prosecution for the deliberate sullying of the country’s reputation,” Kadič wrote.
The debate on the Slovenian media within the Parliamentary Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) has turned into another farce, sold to the Slovenian public by the mainstream media, owned by transitional elites. The discussion was distinctly one-sided, as evidenced by the set of guests of the committee. The Slovenian media landscape was presented to the MEPs by Goran Forbici, Petra Lesjak Tušek, Lenart J. Kučić and Marko Milosavljević.
Prime Minister Janez Janša, the Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti and the other guests did not attend the event but said that they would gladly accept an invitation to a discussion, provided that the exchange of views was organised in physical form on the premises of the European Parliament, that it would be public, and that it would allow sufficient time to cover all of the topics that they would like to address. The Ombudsman Peter Svetina also agreed with the proposed date of the 26th of March.
Proof that they were spreading obvious untruths in front of the European public
It was Milosavljević who lied to the entire European public and claimed that the current government had prematurely dismissed Igor Kadunc from the position of Director-General of RTV Slovenia. That is, of course, not true. The soon-to-be-former first man of the national public broadcasting organisation has repeatedly faced accusations of poor management of the public institution in the past. Every year, Slovenian taxpayers pay 100 million euros for it. Kadunc’s poor management has been confirmed several times in recent years by the Supervisory Board of RTV Slovenia. It is true that they wanted to dismiss him in the Šarec, as well as the current government, but he somehow always kept his position. In his speech, the media expert of the left-wing network, Milosavljevič, kept quiet on the fact that the current Director-General’s term in the public media outlet had expired and the Programme Council had elected a new head of RTV Slovenia. Among the three select candidates, the councillors were the most impressed by the former chairman of the Supervisory Board of RTV Slovenia, Andrej Grah Whatmough.
The on-call media expert of the left, Marko Milosavljević, has been proven to have lied about the early dismissal of Kadunc and concealed the political dismissal of Jadranka Rebernik as the editor-in-chief of the news programme
It was Milosavljević’s and a few others’ appearances that provoked a strong reaction in the Slovenian public. We must also mention the fact that in the discussion, the MEPs used the material that was most likely prepared by Primož Cirman, Blaž Zgaga, Grega Repovž and the Slovene Association of Journalists (Društvo novinarjev Slovenije). Romana Tomc, an MEP from the SDS party, drew attention to the one-sided aspect of presenting the facts about the Slovenian media landscape. “The guests, Goran Forbici, Petra Lesjak Tušek, Lenart J. Kučić and Marko Milosavljević, did not disappoint. Cheerful and misleading, in the style of – media freedom is threatened, journalists are being attacked, Hungarians will destroy us,” Tomc said, adding that the fear of losing the monopoly in the fourth branch of government is obvious. “More than anything, they are afraid of the Nova24TV media outlet.”
In addition to Kadič, the editor-in-chief of the online media outlet Siol, Peter Jančič, also responded to Milosavljević’s obvious lie. Siol is the media outlet that has the second-largest reach of daily readers in Slovenia, so Jančič’s opinion is, therefore, all the more important. In his response to Milosavljević’s lies, he said he had “deliberately and vilely misled the European Parliament.” He added that the on-duty media expert from the Faculty of Social Sciences kept silent about the fact that the left-wing Kadunc will be replaced by Grah Whatmough, who got the position of chairman of the RTV Slovenia’s Supervisory Board as a representative of a liberal party (SMC).
The left-wing media also seem to have forgotten about their own mistakes from the past. Thus, Jančič pointed out that due to the political pressures in the Thompson affair, the same fighters for media freedom tore down the editor-in-chief of the news programme at the time, Jadranka Rebernik, and replaced her with the much more obliging Manica Ambrožič. We must also remember that because of an interview with this Croatian musician, Igor Pirkovič had to leave the position of editor of the show Tednik (Weekly).
Miro Petek responded to the former Delo journalist and now the main hunter of anonymous Twitter whistleblowers, the editor of the “Pod črto” media outlet, Lenart J. Kučić. Kučić mentioned that nowadays, journalists do not dare to write about the business of their owners. Petek, he former Večer journalist and victim of a brutal physical attack, reminded Kučić that Delo has never reported on the business network of its owner, Stojan Petrič. The same can be said about the ownership of other major media outlets, which are controlled by Bojan Petan, Martin Odlazek’s network, Uroš Hakl, and now also the controversial Serbian businessman Drago Šolak.
And then there is the alternative – the web portals of our media house, Demokracija, Domovina, Požareport, Portalplus, and a few other, smaller local web portals. With their biased reporting, RTV Slovenia and POP TV have the greatest public reach, while the media reporting of Planet TV has been correct and balanced in recent months. However, as the research of the Faculty of Media found, in Slovenia, the media space is clearly very left-wing. The survey also found that more than ninety percent of the media in Slovenia have a strong left-wing note. That is why it seems so ridiculous when those who are the source of the problems try to portray themselves as the biggest victims in the European public.
Luka Perš
