Recently, I have been thinking a little more about my career path so far. I have been in journalism for good twenty years and I can say that I have experienced many things in my professional career, including things that strengthened my belief that our country is far from emerging from a state of abnormality and apartheid on an ideological basis. It was clear to me from the beginning that the journalistic profession is full of risks and a kind of a menagerie where you have to be very good at surviving, but at that time I did not understand fully what it means.
I have read many theses about the importance of professional collegiality, even in journalism. Of course, I am not just talking about collegiality within the same collective, but about collegiality in general, which is practically non-existent in Slovenia. In my career, I did not spend much time with journalists from other media houses as even when I was in contact with them, I always had the feeling that they were looking down on me with a kind of contempt, because I was coming from a media house with a different ideological orientation. They called me Janša’s poodle behind my back. That is why I quickly started to dislike the regime’s Association of Slovenian Journalists. I never joined it. And do not regret this decision. Especially when I read various statements and comments about who threatens media freedom in Slovenia. It quickly became clear to me that there is no room for truth and justice there, but rather it is an extension of the political underworld that forms the existing system of preserving and developing revolutionary traditions, which should not come as a surprise since the Slovenian Journalists’ Association had developed from the Partisan Newspaper Association. The name has changed, but the spirit of revolution and struggle against the class enemy remained the same.
But even if I disregard the political reality of Slovenia, including the asymmetry of the social space and the control of social subsystems by the “eternal masters”, who follow the almost 40-year-old spell of Stane Dolanc (you know, I mean: “… if if it weren’t for me, it would mean there is someone else… ”), the work of the DNS and all possible media careerists is equally ignorant – from the point of view that they consider themselves to be some kind of untouchable bosses. They themselves can criticize, slander, attack, spread lies and engage in political activism in the worst sense of the word, while “the others” have no right to defend themselves and God forbid that anyone critiques them. In other words, they are not held accountable to anyone, there is only a blue sky above them (probably without the yellow sun, right?).
Freedom of speech means that if someone freely disseminates untrue information, the other party has the right to reject, critique, and present their side of the story. This is normal: even during the war for Slovenia, agency news appeared on the radio that the at the time President of the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia, Milan Kučan, had signed a document with the European Troika (De Michelis, Poos, Van den Broek) on his first night mission agreeing to its terms to ensure peace. The next day, at the first press conference, Kučan denied this, which was understandable given the information circulating, saying that we pawn our independence very quickly: in exchange for peace, we allegedly promised to return to the state before June 25, 1991. Well, fortunately, this did not happen, but the Slovenian media at the time played a positive role, although there were some exceptions. There were many awkwardness that we were able to calmly forgive, including a slightly emotional performance by the host of the daily news A. Š. at the height of the YLA aggression. But in general, the media did their job of state-forming at the time.
And what is happening with the state-formation stance now? Unfortunately, it struggles. The wave of the epidemic is unreasonably worse than in the spring, and the lion’s share of the blame for this lies with those who enabled various influencers, from Zlatko to Tanja. I believe it hurts if someone we know as the current Prime Minister publicly scolds you on Twitter. But this is not just happening here. In general, there has always been a lot of noise due to Janša’s tweets, even at the time when Janša was only the president of the largest opposition party. There is no winter for Eskimos, you could say in his style. But it is incredibly ignorant to first invite people who have publicly undermined government action to the mainstream shows, and later point the finger at the government, saying it is not effective enough. But when the other side responds, there is crying, moaning and gnashing of teeth. Ergo: We are victims of Prime Minister. Yes, victims so we can attack. And this is called mimicry.
When I observe the latest moves of socio-political workers, I can only smile bitterly. Whether it is a letter from 22 editors or a lawsuit filed by three Soros branches at ZDF, or a letter from various activists of the Peace Institute to European institutions. Everything has already been seen and is boring. Because all this always happens when the “wrong” option is in power. The real motive of such activities is too transparent to be overlooked. There are also cases when the on-duty media pastors should come forward if they had at least a hint of morality in them. For example, the recent theft and obstruction of the work of the Nova24tv cameraman by Zlatan Čordić (at that time the DNS released a very vague and poorly structured statement to the public), the conviction of Bojan Požar, as well as a physical attack on a journalist of Demokracija, Petra Janša, who was also threatened because of her engaged monitoring of the scandalous trial against dr. Milko Novič. But nothing happened. In fact, the regime’s careerists even applauded when at the time Prime Minister Marjan Šarec carried out an advertising diversion against the media he disliked (including Demokracija). However, now, that they have become the subject of critiques, they are crying again about what injustice is happening to them.
Hence, dear socio-political workers and soldiers of the revolution, who dare to call yourselves journalists: so far you have denied me and my colleagues from the “wrong” media houses the title “journalist” saying we are just party propagandists. If you want to play such a game, so be it – in fact, I am denying you the title “journalist”. Because you fool around and do not even hide anymore how you prostitute yourself for crumbs from the master’s desk. I am not denying you the right to do so if you want to continue. But do not think that anyone else will believe you when you attempt to convince the public how free and independent you are and how Janša wants to take the freedom away from you. There better not be any unnecessary crying and moaning. I wish you lots of fun in your quasi-media progressivism! I do not need it.
