Slovenian national television, RTV Slovenia, distanced itself from the values of Slovenian independence. In a documentary that was broadcast on the 30th anniversary of the events in Poljče, where the decision for the plebiscite was made, they distanced themselves from the content that was broadcast. Namely, when broadcasting a documentary, they wrote that it was produced by the Association for Values of Slovenian Independence (Združenje za vrednote Slovenske osamosvojitve – VSO) and that it “does not express the opinions of Television Slovenia.” As far as we know, they do not write anything like that when they broadcast the extreme left-wing shows like Studio City, in which case they could at least conditionally use the excuse that they want to emphasize their apolitical nature by writing this – conditionally because the foundations of the country should be considered a part of the common values of a country, and not a matter of political debate.
This may sound excessive to some, but the gestures of the Slovenian state television are quite self-explanatory. RTV Slovenia no longer wants to be a national television, as it has “added” the text about “distancing themselves from the claims made in the documentary,” to the documentary on Slovenian independence, the foundation of Slovenian nationality. They did not write they distance themselves from some of the claims; they simply wrote that they distance themselves from the claims made in the documentary about the foundation of Slovenian nationality in general.
At the end of the day, it does not matter if the authors of the documentary are people who do not know what they did or if they are some communist provocateurs, the fact is that this is one of the biggest slip-ups and a real shame in the history of the national television, which is not even that well-liked among the Yugo-nostalgic leftists.
“RTV Slovenia is distancing itself from the historical events in Poljče, as narrated by Demos’ participant of the assembly which happened at the time, at which it was decided that we would become an independent country. Soon, the public broadcaster will distance itself from the state and its citizens. It only wants to collect more money from us,” Aleš Hojs, Minister of the Interior, criticized the way RTV Slovenia works.
President of the SLS party, Marjan Podobnik, was also critical of the broadcaster. “During today’s broadcast, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the DEMOS decision for the plebiscite on the independence of Slovenia in Poljče, RTV Slovenia broadcast a special notice about distancing itself from the content of the show at least four times. Apparently, this was an apology to the deep state, for the fact that none of its representatives were part of the broadcast. Shame!” Podobnik wrote.
Janša called for distancing from RTV Slovenia, which distanced itself from the most important political decision in the history of Slovenians
Prime Minister Janez Janša also responded to this shameful act by the RTV Slovenia, and he was justifiably appalled. He used the RTV Slovenia’s own words against it. “It is time for us to distance ourselves from the “national” broadcaster RTV Slovenia, which distanced itself from the most important political decision in the history of Slovenians, which was supported by more than 90 percent of the voters in a plebiscite on December 23rd, 1990.”
To summarize. The national television never distances itself from the extreme leftist content, and not even from the leftist content in general. However, it decided to inform the public that it was distancing itself from the claims in the documentary, about the foundation of the Slovenian nation – the Slovenian independence.
This has at least two meanings. Firstly, this is less important and has been proven countless times before, RTV has double standards. One set of standards for the right-wing topics, and another for left-wing content. And the second meaning is this: when we say right-wing, we should, of course, write this in quotation marks, because the very topic of the foundation of our nationality is one of the most, if not the most fundamental apolitical topic, which should not be “debated.”
Aleš Ernecl