Protest Held Against 'Purges' on Croatian Broadcaster

Several hundred people and journalists protested on Thursday against the wave of sackings and cancellation of shows on the public broadcaster Croatian Radio-Television, HRT, which they say were politically inspired.

Protest on the Square of the Victims of Fascism in Zagreb centre. Photo: Facebook

Several hundred people along with well-known journalists and writers gathered in the Square of the Victims of Fascism in Zagreb on Thursday to protest against sackings and cancellations of shows on the public broadcaster Croatian Radio-Television, HRT.

The organisers of the protest in “Sloboda trecima” [“Freedom to the Thirds” – referring to HRT’s third programme], staged the protest in a form of a live public radio show, with different shows hosting guests, discussing the situation in the media and politics.

Under Croatia’s now already fallen government, almost the whole top management of HRT was removed in a process widely deemed a political purge.

A number of journalists and editors were also axed or moved around, while several shows were pulled.

The “third programme” of HRT is dedicated to cultural issues, documentary shows and classic movies.

The initiative began after Nevenka Dujmovic, acting head of HRT 3 radio channel, earlier this month axed three shows: “Audio.doc”, and “Hidden Part of the Day“, anchored by Ljubica Letinic, and “Morning on the Third“, by Ivica Prtenjaca.

Letinic had received an award from the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, for another show she edited, while “Morning on the Third” was the most listened-to show on the channel.

Organised discussion on the protest. Photo: Facebook

Dujmovic never responded to inquiries about the changes, directing everything to HRT’s public relations office, which also never responded.

The Croatian Journalists and Writers Association, HNiP, an organisation opposed to the HND, on Monday slated Letinic’s shows as “ferocious Marxist… Yugoslav bastions”.

At the protest, Ivica Djikic, a writer and journalist for weekly newspaper Novosti, said: “The media, culture, freedom of expression and creation should not depend on the results of any election. It must be a value that no elections or referendums can put into question.”

He claimed that the government had tried over a period of six months to reshape the media and culture scene according to its own “ideological preferences.

“We shouldn’t trust any government ever or anywhere to respect freedom of the press, speech and expression – but should be sceptical and resist any attempt at restricting freedom,” he said.

“All we have after six months is a cleansed TV and interference in education, while recovery will be long and never complete,” historian Tvrtko Jakovina, who was an editor of the cancelled show “Third History”, said.

Writer and journalist Boris Postnikov said quality programs would restart, however, once “after attempts to impose a right-wing cultural policy” are over.