Medijski watch dog

Nadaljujemo zgodbo z apelom novinarja. Objavljamo zapis Zgage za češki časopis Prague Post, ki ga najdete tule. Spodaj je odlomek za pokušino:

For example, my newspaper, Večer, scrapped an opinion piece I wrote about how the new chief of the Slovenian Army was selected. Editors had previously planned for my column to run at the top of the editorial page.

The next day, I wrote about a change in policy that allows our secret services to eavesdrop on citizens. That column wasn’t published, either. These types of opinion columns were always assigned by editors and run in the past. Since January, however, I have not been called on to write any opinion columns.

According to research by the Peace Institute, an international nonprofit group with offices in Ljubljana, there are three types of press censorship in Slovenia. The first type of censorship is when sentences or whole paragraphs of text are deleted or changed without the consent of the author. Second on the list is when a newspaper refuses to publish articles or opinions after they have been assigned by editors. The third kind is people and topics that are verboten to writers if editors believe writing about them could disturb the government.

All three types of censorship exist at my newspaper and, unfortunately, also at a majority of other major Slovenian publications.

At newspapers, top editors and the chief executive officer make these decisions. That means the distinction between editorial and management is practically dissolved in most Slovenian media.

Worse, most of these managers are informally or personally connected with the government or the ruling SDS political party, which gave them their positions.

Editors removed me from my beat covering intelligence matters five months ago, when the government established a special commission to investigate a Slovenian intelligence-security agency. This investigation and dismantling of the secret service has become a big scandal this year in Slovenia and it still is not finished.

Editors have also threatened to remove me from covering defense and military issues, despite my background in this field.

So now I cover press conferences and write some other stories where there is a need. But I don’t do investigative journalism anymore, because I can’t get the stories published in my newspaper.