On Tuesday, Jadranka Rebernik, the Editor-in-Chief of Television Slovenia’s news programme, sent in her irrevocable resignation to Zvezdan Martič, the new Chairman of the board of the national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS). Until a new editor-in-chief is appointed, Polona Fijavž will lead the editorial department as the Acting Editor-in-Chief. Rebernik’s resignation comes as no surprise, as she has been under lots of pressure for a long time now, with the new management team at RTVS looking for a way to get rid of her.
Commenting on her resignation, RTVS wrote: “According to the Radio-Television Slovenia Act, editors-in-chief of programmes are appointed and dismissed by the Management Board on the proposal of the directors set out in the Statutes. The positions of programme editors-in-chief are openly published by the directors specified in the statutes. The term of office of editors-in-chief shall be four years.”
Jadranka Rebernik was appointed the Editor-in-Chief of TV Slovenia’s news programme in March 2022 for a full four-year term. She had also been Editor-in-Chief in the past, before she was dismissed by former Director-General of RTVS, Igor Kadunc, who, after trying for quite some time, finally managed to dismiss her from the post after a few complications arose due to the resistance from the then-Director of Television Slovenia, Ljerka Bizilj, who was unwilling to break the law so that Kadunc could install an editorial team that was more favourable to the then-government of Miro Cerar. When the balance of power changed, Kadunc was no longer elected for the post of Director-General and Rebernikova was reinstated as Editor-in-Chief. The resignation is the result of pressures following the attempted rapid “depoliticisation” of the state-owned media outlet by the coalition parties – namely, the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda), the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD), and the Left party (Levica), which is not proceeding in a fast manner that the ruling coalition probably expected, due to a number of complications.
We also recently saw a clip of Zvezdan Martič in the National Assembly last week, where he did not want to discuss the 2023 Rule of Law Report on media, journalism and democracy in Slovenia. When the Chair of the Culture Committee, Tamara Vonta (Freedom Movement), gave Martič the floor, he explained his silence by saying: “Dear Chairwoman, thank you. But I am completely surprised because I did not receive any information on this except the invitation, so I did not even adequately prepare for this. We got the invitation yesterday, so I apologise if you have any questions, I can answer them, but I have nothing prepared. I apologise again.” However, a lengthy speech was given then by the former Chairman of the RTVS Programme Council, Peter Gregorčič, who described the abuse of power that led to the government takeover of the national media outlet.
Spletni Časopis, Peter Jančič
