“After everything that has been happening, related to journalists and the personnel policy of dictator Golob, the entire top of the judiciary should publicly apologise for the conviction due to the tweet about journalistic prostitutes. And then, the judiciary should process the corrupt connection of the Necenzurirano (Uncensored) web portal with the ruling party,” said retired journalist Vinko Vasle. With the recent nonchalant transfers of “independent” journalists to the political ranks, which are far from being the first such cases, Vasle’s call is most appropriate.
Namely, media prostitutes are a fact and even a widespread phenomenon, and Janez Janša was convicted for a tweet that pointed this out. The Celje District Court and the entire top of the judiciary should apologise to the President of the Slovenian Democratic Party for this, as the reasoning for the verdict fell just one day after it was handed down. The judgment, which was based on shaky foundations, was not brought down by the critical public, nor by any lawyer, but by the plaintiff herself, who switched over to politics. Only 24 hours after the verdict was delivered, Mojca Šetinc Pašek publicly showed her colours. She announced her candidacy for the National Assembly and was alter also elected, and her actions, which cannot be described as anything other than media prostitution, dismantled the judgment in her favour, which the Celje District Court ruled on.
The reasoning of the judgment, which was written by the Celje District Court, reads as follows: “The claim that the plaintiffs are used up prostitutes, stating that their cheap services are sold for the price of 30 or 35 euros, even if it is a metaphor, constitutes a gross attack on their honour and good name and is a case of discreditation, disqualification, insulting, humiliation, contempt.” If these were two journalists who had devoted their entire careers to independent reporting and to reporting with the same harshness towards all political actors, then one might indeed wonder whether this is an unfounded label. But these are Mojca Šetinc Pašek and Eugenia Carl, who have practically become the archetypal examples of media hypocrisy and lack of integrity by now.
If we take a closer look at the reasoning of the judgment of the Celje District Court, we can see that the tweet of the President of the Slovenian Democratic Party is a completely appropriate label for the two media workers. Mojca Šetinc Pašek has shown, with her public entry into politics, that Janša has neither discredited nor disqualified her with his choice of words but perhaps merely offended her. The truth hurts, and Šetinc Pašek has created this truth by herself, and with her public entry into politics, she has put it on display for all to see. Moreover, her journalistic career, after her political career is over, will continue at the national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia, where she will most likely be put in front of the camera again, and she will once again declare herself “independent.”
Why is the Ministry of Justice not prosecuting the Uncensored web portal?
Vinko Vasle also rightfully pointed out the fact that there is more than obviously a connection between the ruling party, the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda), and the “Necenzurirano.si” (Uncensored) web portal. During the times of left-wing governments, 600 thousand euros were transferred from the state-owned Telekom company for the financing of the Uncensored web portal, and 103 thousand euros from the state-owned Gen-I energy company were used for the same thing, back when the current Prime Minister, Robert Golob, was still at the helm. In addition, there are grounds for suspecting that the controversial portal was at some point used as a tool to influence the outcome of the Slovenian elections. The Chinese-owned company Gorenje paid 70 thousand euros to the web portal. “That is interference in the internal affairs of another country by a foreign country. In the USA, such things are investigated. I hope that the competent institutions will also investigate this in our country,” Janša commented in April this year.
Andrej Žitnik
