The Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) parliamentary group demanded that Tomaž Modic, a journalist from the “Necenzurirano.si” (“Uncensored”) web portal, be removed from the National Assembly’s Commission of Inquiry, which is headed by the “independent” Mojca Šetinc Pašek, as him being involved in the work of the Commission would be a clear conflict of interest. Šetinc Pašek has accused the SDS party of attempting to discredit her with this move, even though the Commission of Inquiry is clearly discrediting itself with such a decision. However, the SDS party is not the only one who disagrees with Modic’s participation in the Commission. Petra Lesjak Tušek, President of the Slovene Association of Journalists, and professor Marko Milosavljević, her colleague, who have hitherto been prominent supporters of the left, also believe that this decision is controversial.
“Mojca Šetinc Pašek believes that the request of the SDS party’s parliamentary group to exclude Tomaž Modic from his position as an expert assistant to be an obstruction of the work and a subversion of the investigation. Below is the opinion of her colleague Petra Lesjak Tušek and Dr Milosavljević – and what now?” the President of the SDS parliamentary group, Jelka Godec, wrote on Twitter, referring to the fact that even two of the “independent” MP Mojca Šetinc Pašek’s colleagues do not support the fact that journalist Tomaž Modic became part of the National Assembly’s Commission of Inquiry. Namely, Petra Lesjak Tušek and Marko Milosavljević believe that such a decision would undermine the credibility of the journalistic portal, and the whole thing is also ethically questionable.
Apparently, Mojca Šetinc Pašek – the independent, as she likes to call herself, is the only one who has no problem with the fact that she hired Tomaž Modic as an expert assistant to the Commission of Inquiry. It should be pointed out that Tomaž Modic is a journalist from the Uncensored web portal, and as an expert alongside Šetinc Pašek, he would be investigating the alleged illegal financing of political parties. Anyone in their right mind would find this controversial, especially when we know that as a journalist, he has been involved and cooperated with state-owned companies. Not to mention that we have reported in the past on certain questionable funding of the Uncensored web portal, for which we still have no clear explanation.
Even Pašek’s colleagues criticised her controversial decision – so what now?
After Šetinc Pašek criticised the SDS party for demanding that Modic be excluded from the Commission of Inquiry, claiming that this was an attempt to discredit her, it will be interesting to see what she will accuse her colleagues Lesjak Tušek and Milosavljević of, who, according to the N1 media outlet, also disagree with her decision.
They believe that Modic’s participation in the Commission of Inquiry is controversial from the point of view of the credibility of the Uncensored web portal and think that it would be “more hygienic” to avoid this whole situation, while Milosavljević pointed out the problem of ethics and the loss of distinction between the profession of journalist and the paid work of a political institution such as the National Assembly. The President of the Slovene Association of Journalists also shared her disappointment in a post on Facebook, when she herself saw that the new Prime Minister Robert Golob’s promises to “depoliticise” the public media were empty, especially when several “independent” journalists had fled under his wing in such a short period of time, and he even announced more transfers to come. So much for depoliticisation.
And yet, perhaps, in this case, we can also draw on the words of the psychoanalyst Roman Vodeb, who has said in the past that “left-wing journalists advance rapidly when leftists are in power” and that their supporters “get a comfort interest. They are immediately taken in by the left, because when the right rule, they attack them with all their might, hoping that the left will pay them back when it comes to power.” And the same is true in this case – Tomaž Modic has done his part, and now it is his turn to be paid for it, even if it is through the politicisation of the media, which is something that Janša was constantly blamed for in the past.
Tanja Brkić
