By: Lea Kalc Furlanič
Anyone who is not in blinkers, but rationally follows the flood of RTVS posts on social networks and in all media, can quickly realise that the fight in this public institution, for which we all pay a mandatory TV fee, for the survival of long-standing editorial policy and ideological agenda of all those editors and journalists who are not Možinas or Pirkovičs, is very wrathful.
It goes so far that editors and hosts even lie about their censorship of certain controversial content, that Bergants greet Pirkovičs with Praised Jesus in the hallway instead of with Hello, that some abuse the public institution for personal support to a colleague (hosts in TV shows wear T-shirts Studio City) whose contract was not extended due to severe threats to certain colleagues, that pressures and calls for the resignation of “non-ours” are already a daily practice, that slandering the latter (the case of Vida Petrovčič) on FB or TW is something completely normal, as well as strikes… “Are we going back to 1945? Many (journalists) are like in a revolutionary trance, which is reminiscent of the historical Slovenian split, when incitement and slander escalated into violence,” someone commented on social networks. Ah no, their explanation is that they would just like to normalise RTVS, right?!
The fact that political beliefs are constantly being exercised on RTVS (and thus serving a parallel mechanism) has been sufficiently clearly substantiated by Ukom’s weekly analyses. Contributions were assessed in several cases as biased, in favour of only one, left-wing option. As well as the decline in viewership of news broadcasts shows that viewers and listeners no longer accept the current way of reporting. If the editor and host of Odmevi show, without the knowledge of the editor-in-chief of news programmes, censor a planned and already prepared article on Golob’s salary, then something is seriously wrong! And unjustifiably accusing the person who told this in public is criminal and is the culmination of negligence. Or these people are just very angry, and they are afraid that “their” RTV fortress is being shaken.
Lea Kalc Furlanič is a journalist for Demokracija and a former long-time journalist for Primorske novice.