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The leader of one of the EU’s smallest countries is waging a big campaign against journalists he doesn’t like.
Slovenia’s prime minister, Janez Janša, whose country takes over the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency later this year, has repeatedly and publicly attacked the country’s main public media outlets.
The right-wing populist leader, an admirer of Donald Trump, has referred to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) as a “national disgrace.” He has accused public broadcasting organization Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV) of spreading “lies” and misleading the public, tweeting that “obviously there are too many of you and you are paid too well.” And just this month, the prime minister called RTV — along with a private broadcaster — “irresponsible virus spreaders.”
Janša’s campaign has gone beyond rhetoric. Last summer, his government proposed changes to the country’s media laws that would boost state influence over STA and reduce funding for RTV. State funding for the news agency was also temporarily halted late last year, sparking fears about its future.
The campaign has had a toxic effect on media freedom in the southeast European country, according to journalists, watchdogs and academics.
POLITICO spoke with over a dozen journalists, including senior staff at Slovenia’s public media outlets. Many of them accuse Janša of whipping up hatred against public media reporters and editors, resulting in threatening phone calls, letters, emails and messages on social media. Journalists say the pressure has led to self-censorship and that some editors have resorted to calling police over threats.
And while some journalists say they have been able to continue reporting as usual, many covering Janša’s government say political pressure is strongly felt in their daily work, affecting reporting on issues such as Hungarian investments in Slovenia, the role of far-right movements in the country and even Janša’s Trump-boosting on Twitter.
Asked if the Slovenian Press Agency’s independence is at risk, editor-in-chief Barbara Štrukelj said: “Absolutely.”
Janša’s moves directly contradict the EU’s standards on media freedom — Commission Vice President Věra Jourová declared last year that “journalists should be able to report without fear or favor.” And the pressure comes at a time when concerns are growing about media freedom and plurality across much of Central and Eastern Europe — in particular in Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria.
“The pressure I feel right now is strong,” said one senior Slovenian journalist working for public media, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The “experience in the past months is something really new and unprecedented.”
Watchdogs have also expressed concerns.
“Janez Janša’s attitude toward Slovenia’s public media is not merely aggressive or standoffish. Frankly, it’s venomous,” said Noah Buyon, a research analyst at think tank Freedom House, which tracks the state of democracy in the region.
Janša’s ‘war’
The prime minister began his career as a young Communist-turned-dissident in the former Yugoslavia, later becoming a right-wing politician.
It’s a path that closely mirrors that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close Janša ally who has moved to exert greater control of his own country’s media industry. Like Orbán, Janša is not in his first stint as prime minister — he served from 2004 until 2008, and then briefly again in 2012-13, before returning to power last March.
Janša’s “Communist past is reflected and influences this contemporary attitude towards the media, which is the attitude of a person who does not want to see any criticism of himself,” said Marko Milosavljević, a professor of journalism and media policy at the University of Ljubljana.
When Janša came back to power last March, “this aggressive attitude towards the media and journalism was immediately seen,” Milosavljević noted, citing the draft media laws as an attempt to put the media “on a leash.”
A fixture of the region’s political scene for over three decades, Janša leads the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), a member of the European People’s Party, with an iron fist. But unlike Orbán, Janša governs as part of an unstable multiparty coalition, a reality that limits his room for maneuver.
Nevertheless, coalition politics has not stopped Janša from taking direct aim at journalists.
In a May 2020 essay titled “War with the Media,” Janša insisted there were “capable, professional and ethical journalists” at major publicly funded media outlets who were being silenced by senior female editors, although he didn’t present any specific evidence.
“An atmosphere of intolerance and hatred is being created by a small circle of female editors, having both family and capital connections with the pillars of the deep state,” Janša wrote.
The prime minister — nicknamed “Marshal Twito” — also frequently uses social media to berate individual media outlets and journalists.
After the board overseeing RTV picked a new director-general in late January — in a process so contentious that one of the candidates has now launched a lawsuit — the prime minister tweeted a clip from the broadcaster’s coverage, writing: “hopefully the new broom will fix such false reporting.”
Janša’s allies also currently run multiple pro-government news outlets, partially with the help of investors linked to Hungary’s Orbán. These outlets have taken an active role in amplifying rhetoric targeting public media.
“STA in the service of the deep state!” reads one December headline on the website of Nova24TV, a pro-Janša channel.
The prime minister has dismissed journalists’ concerns. Janša told POLITICO that it is he and his party who face threats — pointing to anti-government protesters who have adopted the phrase smrt janšizmu — a play on a Yugoslav partisan slogan — meaning “death to Janšism.”
Slovenian officials close to the prime minister say unprofessional journalists are the problem.
“There is a complete freedom of press in Slovenia,” Foreign Minister Anže Logar, a member of Janša’s SDS, told POLITICO in an interview.
The problem with Slovenian media, Logar said, is that it is not equally “distributed between left and right side — so it’s very one-sided,” adding that the country needs more “professionalism” in order to distinguish “political activism from journalism.”
Under pressure
Journalists say that personal attacks both from senior officials and the pro-government press have put a strain on their work.
“You cannot work normally,” said a second journalist working for public media, who, like most reporters, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The journalist described the climate for reporters as “very stressful and very brutal.”
In an open letter published last October, 22 Slovenian editors warned that the country’s free press was in danger, saying local journalists “are subjected to direct lying, insinuations, manipulations and insults from those in power, starting with the top of the government.”
In some instances, journalists say the anti-media rhetoric has translated into hostility in the form of threatening phone calls and messages. “You are a whore’s child, you are shit. When you go to sleep remember who you are,” said one anonymous letter addressed to a female RTV journalist and cited in a recent report by the Slovenian Association of Journalists.
“People have become frightened,” said a third journalist, who holds a senior role in a public media outlet. Female journalists are particularly targeted: “If a woman does a story, everybody says ‘she’s a whore, she’s a bitch,’” the journalist said, adding that “psychologically, this situation is like a war.”
Staff also point to institutional pressures. Two journalists cited RTV’s Program Council — whose members are in part selected by Slovenia’s national assembly — as a source of indirect coercion on editors. The council has the power to appoint and dismiss RTV’s head, as well as approve the broadcaster’s business plans.
In another sign of public authorities influencing the media, Slovenian outlets reported earlier this month that the government had blocked public health officials from appearing on RTV and on a commercial channel — a development that watchdog groups, including the International Press Institute, decried.
Then there’s the issue of taxpayer funding for state media and potential changes to local media laws.
About half of STA’s revenue comes from its role as a public news service. While some public funding for the agency was restored in January following criticism both domestically and from the European Commission, its future financing remains uncertain. In early February the government proposed an amendment that would change the organization’s ownership structure.
Janša’s administration rebuts any allegations of coercion. “At no point in time,” said the government communications office, has the government placed “any form of editorial pressure on STA.”
Asked about the proposed legal changes put forward last summer — which are still under consideration — the office said the legislation “does not pose a threat to freedom of the press in any conceivable way.”
Still, the moves have left many staffers deeply concerned. Multiple public media employees said self-censorship is occurring.
“We’d rather not touch some stories,” said a fourth journalist working for public media, adding that public media occasionally avoids in-depth reporting on Hungarian money in Slovenia, as well as institutions such as the police and concerns regarding far-right groups in the country.
A fifth journalist, who works for STA, recalled being told off by an official for asking questions about the prime minister’s tweets boosting Donald Trump’s false claims of U.S. voter fraud — and then being “advised by my colleagues not to pick a fight.”
On-air, reporters have “started to become really careful” when discussing the government, said a sixth journalist.
Some public media employees acknowledge, however, that political pressure in Slovenian media is not new.
“We have pressures also when a left-wing government is in power,” but “it’s more organized” under the current leadership, said a seventh journalist working for public media.
The Slovenian government rejects the notion that some journalists are self-censoring.
“Since the media is predominately connected to the left centers of capital and political power, it goes without saying that there is absolutely no form of self-censorship occurring in Slovenian media outlets,” the government’s communication office said.
Some voices within public media also say that concerns are overblown.
Janša “can’t censor anyone” and “has no real influence” in mainstream media, said Jadranka Rebernik, head of the parliamentary program on RTV. “I think there’s a lot of dramatization in Slovenia right now,” she added, saying RTV is “harder on this government than the previous one” and “should be politically impartial and independent.”
But for many journalists, the outlook for Slovenia’s media is bleak.
“Press freedom is more and more in danger,” said Petra Lesjak Tušek, president of the Slovenian Association of Journalists.
“Few countries in Europe have experienced such a swift downturn in press and media freedom.”
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