The Croatian Journalists' Association (CJA) has sent an open letter to numerous organisations and institutions, asking them to support Hrvoje Zovko, a former executive editor of HTV4, one of the news channels of Croatian Radio-television (HRT) and the current president of the CJA. This letter calls for the intimidation, censorship and arbitrariness with which the HRT administration runs the company, which degrades open and professional journalism, to change.

TV and radio broadcaster takes revenge

Hrvoje Zovko was fired after he flagged censorship and said that he felt he could not do his work responsibly and professionally. The CJA has claimed that the HRT administration – instead of looking at the content of what Zovko had said – is taking revenge on the CJA, whose branch at HRT has brought up irregularities and violations of professional journalistic standards on numerous occasions.

When he filled his resignation, Zovko verbally clashed with his boss, Katarina Periš Čakarun, HRT's Information Media Service manager. The public television service used this conflict to dismiss him, completely ignoring his right to voice his own opinions. This is a practice inherent in authoritarian regimes and democratic societies should not tolerate it.

Parliamentary committee refuses to discuss the issue

The president of the CJA fought in the newsroom for the principles of professional journalistic standards, but was "rewarded" with sanctions for verbal dereliction. Zovko has worked on public television for 21 years and during this time he received neither verbal nor written warnings about his work. He found out about his dismissal from the media, and his official email address was cancelled before he officially dismissed.

Immediately after receiving information about the dismissal of its president, the CJA sent an official request to the Information, Informatisation and Media Committee of the Croatian Parliament to put the case on the agenda of the session and to permit the participation of the CJA’s Executive Committee representatives, allowing them to explain the situation. Most of the members of the Committee rejected the idea of discussing intimidation of journalists on HRT and systematic destruction of public media service. The committe replied that this is a "labour dispute" in which they "do not want to interfere". Unfortunately due to the will of the ruling party and the opposition, the CJA is not represented on the Committee, meaning that journalists voices cannot be heard through this body.

Similar findings hushed after HRT board sacked

Another puzzle is that the findings in a report for 2016 by the HRT board – which was dismissed – warned of numerous irregularities in the work and management of the administration, were declared a "business secret" at the request of the same administration. The majority in Parliament refuses to declassify the document, even though HRT is financed by taxpayers, who have a right to know if the business decisions of the administration are legal.