By: Peter Jančič (Spletni časopis)
Only an independent judge can decide on the guilt of Dušan Josip Smodej, following the publication of testimonies alleging that he sexually abused drugged minors, indulged in fantasies of tying young women to a radiator in a basement, and engaged in financial fraud.
A judge cannot be replaced by posts on social media, village gossip, or uncensored journalists hired by politicians to smear opponents, or even sharing their beds. The problem in the Smodej case is that we know a judge’s verdict will likely never come. Not only because the consequences of reporting sexual abuse, if victims dare to report at all, usually fall hardest on the victims themselves. We also have a police leadership that resembles those uncensored journalists in the service of politicians. The new government has already installed its own. It replaced the police leadership faster and more extensively than the previous one, creating the impression of a political purge designed to prosecute and discredit opposition politicians while protecting those in power if they find themselves in trouble, as in the case of Dušan Josip Smodej.
This is the column that, according to the government‑appointed new leadership of Telekom, was deemed an impermissible intrusion into the privacy of Robert Golob, Luka Mesec, and Zoran Janković, and was censored by the portal Siol.net. I was not even informed that the column was being “removed.” That was underhanded and unfair to me as a professional journalist. I republished the column in my own outlet so everyone can read what, according to the leadership of state‑owned Telekom, and earlier Mihael Šuštaršič and even the Honorary Tribunal of the Journalists’ Association, must not be written in this country. What I wrote as editor‑in‑chief of Siol.net was true and important. Time will tell.
We have already seen how judicial authorities and the media sweep abuses of power under the rug to protect prominent politicians, for example, in the ‘sex for employment’ affair involving Ljubljana’s mayor Zoran Janković. And even recently, when the Honorary Tribunal of the more left‑leaning Journalists’ Association ruled that it was a breach of their code to inform the public in detail about the court case brought by pharmacist Katarina Ravnikar against two criminal investigators, claiming they had written too much in an official record about the motives and consequences of her intimacy with the mayor. You were not supposed to know. They wanted to conceal this pharmacist’s case, how power in Ljubljana was abused for sex.
When Luka Mesec gets entangled
Among politicians, the first to run into trouble in the radiator affair was Labour Minister Luka Mesec, who unnecessarily denied any connection with Smodej. He publicly assured that they were not connected and that he had never attended Smodej’s parties, after Roman Uranjek’s suicide, when it was already clear that a shock was looming for the cultural elite and the political class linked to it, due to testimonies appearing online about drugging and raping, even of minors. When all this was already known, Nika Kovač, director of the March 8 Institute, received by Prime Minister Robert Golob and Speaker Urška Klakočar Zupančič, warned that drug use, though somewhat illegal, was a completely legitimate personal choice. She repeated the message of drug use’s legitimacy several times. I was stunned by statements that justified intoxication. Thus, Mesec declared that he had absolutely nothing to do with Smodej, with the “legitimate” use of drugs for rape, or with any of it.
After this publication, videos appeared on social media showing Luka Mesec at Fotopub, run by Smodej, during an exhibition of painter Roman Uranjek’s works. There was also footage of Mesec with a glass in hand, resembling a party, the ordinary kind at a cultural event, not the kind involving drug‑assisted rape in some basement. According to media reports, at least some of the girls allegedly consumed the drugs voluntarily and with awareness of the consequences. Legitimate, though not entirely legal, as Nika Kovač kindly described it.
Smodej is awkward for the left bloc because he was one of the faces of protests against the previous government, co‑organised by Mesec’s Levica, which Mesec and other politicians of today’s ruling parties attended. After the elections, when Levica joined Robert Golob in taking power, Smodej, as editor of the cultural portal Kulturnik, even conducted an interview with the new Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko. In recent days, the minister explained she did not know Smodej himself was coming; she had been told only that journalist Nejc Krevs from TVS had contacted them for the portal owned by Beletrina. This is unusual. Beletrina is a private cultural company well connected to both left and right political circles, and like all such companies, often seeks to influence the media. That TVS journalists work directly for them, and, apparently, are even paid for interviews with politicians, is new. Smodej was certainly paid.
Whether Krevs was allowed this extra work at TVS is still being checked. But interviews by prominent journalists after the elections are a pattern. Smodej is not the only case. Recall Marcel Štefančič, journalist and longtime supervisory board member of the left‑leaning weekly Mladina, who before the elections used Studio City on TVS to promote Robert Golob and even publicly demanded that journalists abandon professional rules and follow his “rebellious” example. Immediately after the elections, he conducted a major interview with Golob, in which Golob announced the “depoliticisation” of RTVS, meaning the removal of key directors, programme council members, and supervisors.
The planned takeover of the country’s largest publicly funded media outlet was legalised in parliament without public debate, using a procedure reserved for war and natural disasters. But due to SDS’s referendum initiative, Golob’s capture of RTVS and its transformation into an even more partisan outlet is currently on hold. In talks with unions, Golob promised to resolve the financial situation after the referendum. He is shrewd: people would be angry if he paid from their pockets beforehand. That RTVS is politically infiltrated is well known. Its editorial offices are the most important recruitment pool for left‑wing parties. From there come their party leaders, MPs, PR officers, government officials … RTVS is a more important recruitment pool than all the youth wings of the ruling parties. We all know what this means for the image of independence. It does not exist. Nothing. Neither in reality nor even in appearance.
Journalists in bed with politicians?
Krevs’s interview with Smodej and the culture minister was not the week’s strangest case involving TVS journalists. At least there is no information that Krevs is an intimate partner of Minister Vrečko, which might have motivated his actions outside the newsroom. But TVS journalists themselves pointed to host Saša Krajnc, who resisted reporting on the government’s planned purges at RTVS, after Mladina editor Gregor Repovž publicly demanded “cleansing.” RTVS then broke off cooperation with Mladina. Krajnc’s public defiance, supported by colleagues who joined him in the studio, raised questions, since insiders know connections hidden from the public. If Krajnc is more than just a former colleague and friend of ex‑TVS journalist Toni Tovornik, this “rebellion” looks very odd.
Why? Because in this case it is as if TVS were reporting on Luka Mesec’s entanglement in the Smodej affair through Manca Krnel, who would fiercely insist it was all malicious slander, while TVS concealed the fact that this angry “independent” journalist was Luka Mesec’s intimate partner, checking his side of the story straight from the bedroom. Or as if TVS reported on the €103,000 Robert Golob transferred to a company once founded and run by Necenzurirano journalist Vesna Vuković, with the report delivered by Primož Cirman, without telling the public that he is the husband of former RTVS journalist Petra Bezjak Cirman, whom Golob has since appointed head of Ukom, while Vuković became head of PR for his Freedom Movement.
Stories that in July the government appointed former RTVS journalist Toni Tovornik as secretary‑general of the Ministry of Culture, led by Asta Vrečko, and that he may be more than just friends with Krajnc, were not published without verification. We officially asked RTVS and the ministry for clarification on whether the information about Krajnc and Tovornik being intimate partners was true. The editorial agreement was not to write about it if anyone denied it, even slightly, even hinted it was untrue.
But they did not.
RTVS informed us that its leadership does not collect such information. We did not ask whether RTV leadership keeps records of who is married to whom or of relationships without rings. We asked specifically about the relationship between journalist Krajnc and Tovornik. Even after the story was published, when we publicly raised the question of a possible conflict of interest, neither Krajnc nor Tovornik denied the connection. We are still waiting. And if they do decide to respond, we will immediately publish their answers and explanations. State institutions, both the Ministry of Culture and RTVS, are legally obliged to reply, whatever they choose to say. So far, RTVS has at least answered. The Ministry of Culture has not.
After we published the story about a possible conflict of interest, attempts to discredit us followed immediately. We were accused of peeking into bedrooms and trying to smear TVS host Krajnc by writing about his sexual orientation. That is nonsense. We do not look into anyone’s bedroom. And I personally have nothing against anyone for one kind of love or another. The problem is not sexual orientation. The problem would arise if the partner of a TV host were a senior government official at the ministry leading the RTVS leadership purge project, a purge justified by resistance at TVS, resistance publicly led by the host’s intimate friend. If hidden, that would be a dishonest connection between politicians and RTVS journalists. If not hidden, it would still be highly problematic.
Such “independence” of journalists is hard for people to understand.
It is well known that journalists and politicians who loudly accuse others of political ties see nothing wrong when they themselves are connected and break the very rules they demand of others. We already saw this in Levica. One MP, formerly a journalist, officially requested parliament’s permission to continue working as a journalist alongside his parliamentary role. Entirely “independent.” More on this can be read here: Additional Earnings: Sukič, Siter and Židan Following the Example of Vilfan and Tomić.
At least Mojca Pašek Šetinc did not commit such folly, she did not request permission to continue as a TVS editor while serving as an MP for Svoboda, promoting Robert Golob against Janez Janša. That is now her role in parliament.
And then the uncensored idols of Nataša Pirc Musar
Connections matter, especially intimate ones. This was evident when Luka Mesec, in a gesture of trust, appointed as his chief of staff at the Ministry of Labour the wife of his party’s parliamentary group leader, Matej T. Vatovec. The case was even reviewed by the anti‑corruption commission, which declared that such family ties at the top of government were not problematic.
Into this story of unusual connections that could undermine the image of journalistic independence in the rebellion against an editor stepped former RTVS journalist, longtime Information Commissioner, and briefly appointed RTVS director, now presidential candidate backed by Milan Kučan and Danilo Türk, Nataša Pirc Musar. She issued the following unusual statement about the events:
“The journalists’ struggle is not just their personal fight; it is a battle for the survival of democracy. Only independent and uncensored media can continue to hold up a mirror to those in power. And when democracy is at stake, we must not remain silent, neither journalists nor the public.”
If these hosts and journalists are truly independent, they must clearly and loudly refute the rumours that the host leading the rebellion against his editor‑in‑chief is intimately connected with a political official who is just now taking a top post at the Ministry of Culture – and who, as you know, was formerly a journalist at RTVS, the recruitment pool of these parties. As for the so‑called uncensored journalism, which we all know is on Robert Golob’s payroll, I would never, in Nataša Pirc Musar’s place, boast of it as a form of holding up a mirror to power.
It is so transparently false that it could damage her campaign. Because the radiator affair is not just Dušan Josip Smodej. It is much more.
