Report of the Association of Journalists and Commentators (ZNP) on the Situation in the Media Field in Slovenia in 2014

Situation in the field of media did not change significantly in 2014 as compared to the previous year. There has been somewhat less political pressure on the media since the formation of the new Government under Miro Cerar in the second half of 2014, at least on the outside. However, there has been more criminal prosecution of journalists by the State's Prosecutor's Office.

Under the Government of Alenka Bratušek in 2013 and in the first half of 2014, the majority of daily information media was subjected to enhanced political pressure. In 2013, Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek launched criminal prosecution against the photojournalist Jani Božič for taking photos of the SMS on her mobile phone at the time when she was appointed Prime Minister in the Parliament (she was congratulated by a renowned economist). Prosecution in the first instance ended in February 2015, with Božič being sentenced to five months of probation.

Dear Colleagues 

We are the Association of Journalists and Commentators from Slovenia, which unites a group of journalists from different media who are not members of the Slovene Association of Journalists. 

We wish to inform you about more cases in Slovenia, where journalists are having problems because of their work. Among such people is also the former President of our Association, Reporter's journalist Igor Kršinar, who has been defending himself in court for his articles on the murders of opponents of the former Yugoslav communist secret service UDBA committed by the latter abroad. Kršinar has been criminally prosecuted for insults, and the prosecution was launched by the former chiefs of the Yugoslav and Slovenian UDBA Silvo Gorenc and Janez Zemljarič, even though in his articles, Kršinar only cited the archived records available in the national archives and some other books that have been published for quite some time now. Criminal prosecution against the journalist Kršinar is so much more problematic also because a court trial began in Germany not long ago against two former senior officers of the Croatian UDBA who were involved in the murder of a Croatian opponent in 1983, which happened on German territory.

The answer of the President of the European Commission in an open letter of Association of Journalists and Commentators.