By: Jože Biščak
RTV Slovenia should have been sold long ago. This would not only have avoided the complications in this progressive media flora and fauna, where stomping employees periodically, in intervals aligned with changes of government, complain that right‑wing governments prevent them from “independent reporting to the public,” but it would also save taxpayers their hard‑earned money. As it is, they are forced under threat of coercion to pay for a programme regardless of whether they watch, listen to, or read it.
This will apparently continue for quite some time, because the latest decision of the Constitutional Court, claiming that Golob’s “depoliticisation” of the national broadcaster is fully in line with the constitution, not only legitimises the most thorough post‑independence purge in a public institution, but also signals that the predominantly left‑leaning constitutional judges will prevent Janša’s government from making any changes on Kolodvorska Street. A consultative referendum on abolishing the RTV fee is expected in the autumn. You can be sure they will block it, regardless of voters’ decision. It will be labelled as restricting “media freedom” and an attack on “independent journalism”; they will claim the referendum is not in the public interest and violates some Brussels directive.
The Constitutional Court’s justification for the revolutionary intervention in the structure of the public broadcaster, when the terms of members of the programme and supervisory boards and the leadership of RTV were terminated overnight, is worrying: the premature termination of these terms was supposedly necessary because a gradual transition would not ensure “immediate depoliticisation.” This is Kardelj‑style logic, the logic of self‑managed socialism. And anyone who thinks they will allow a centre‑right government to reorganise the national broadcaster in the same way is mistaken. Only the awakened and progressive may do so.
Even from a strictly economic perspective, the public broadcaster is a relic of another era. Why should the state own any media at all, when today everyone has thousands of ways to get information about whatever interests them? And we are forced to pay for it. In a free and democratic society, media should be on the market and survive through subscriptions, advertising, donations. Instead, we have a public institution that survives regardless of what it does, since it has no competition and no accountability. It simply devours tens of millions of taxpayer euros. And they call this “independence.” Independence is not having your hands constantly in someone else’s pockets, true independence is created and proven on the market. Let viewers and listeners decide for themselves what is worth paying for.
When you replace people appointed in previous terms with “civil society” and NGO representatives who are all aligned with the left, you do not “depoliticise” anything, as Golob’s takeover of the public broadcaster is justified by the Constitutional Court – you simply continue politicising it, replacing one politics with another. This is a textbook example of how the modern left operates: when an organisation is “depoliticised” and fully controlled by them, any planned change or criticism is immediately labelled hostile, an attack on autonomy and independence. Even when some former constitutional judges reacted critically to the Court’s decision, the dominant media immediately reported that they were undermining “trust in the law” and damaging the authority of interpreters and guardians of the constitution. But how can we trust people (with the exception of the two judges who dissented) who admit that the controversial law interfered with institutional autonomy, yet claim these were “extraordinary circumstances” where “public interest” prevailed?
“Victory!” shouted former culture minister Asta Vrečko on X. Perhaps a victory for one side, but certainly a defeat for the rule of law – meaning the Constitutional Court itself must be reformed. The Court used terms such as “depoliticisation,” “plurality,” and “independence” to justify its decision, words that do not belong in the vocabulary of strict legal reasoning and are far from neutral. For some time now, they have been weapons of the left in the culture war. And with this latest decision, the constitutional judges have become part of it.
