by Peter Truden
You should be afraid for the freedom of the media in Slovenia. The situation is alarming. The media has become a political party. Media were taken over by tycoons, not by private Hungarian investors, who only have two micro-investments in Slovenia, which together do not represent even one (1) percent of the media landscape.
Hungarians are the last concern of the professional defenders of media pluralism and independence.
Today, at the request of MEP Tanja Fajon, the European Parliament is expected to discuss Hungarian interference in the media in Slovenia and Northern Macedonia. She allegedly found evidences on the obscure portal Necenzurirano (Uncensored).
Well, before convening debates in the European Parliament, where they will spread the conspiracy theories of the web portal Necenzurirano.si, it might be better for MEPs to become familiar with the ownership structure of this portal and with the real image of the Slovenian media landscape. More than 90 percent of media in Slovenia is ideologically and capital-related to the left-wing political wing and completely dependent on business with state-owned companies and public procurement.
The main printed newspapers in the country (Delo, Dnevnik, Večer) are owned by tycoons who are intimately connected with the left political wing. All three are very obviously campaigning for their owners and advertising their companies, which compete in public money tenders.
Journalists of the largest commercial and national television are fleeing to political parties or state-owned companies controlled by the transitional left. Of the 20 former journalists in Slovene politics, as many as 18 joined left-wing political parties. One of them was also Tanja Fajon!
Radio tycoons Odlazek and Oblak – intimately connected with left-wing politics – abused the institute of program radio networks. They destroyed local radio stations and established a regime of nationwide left-wing networks.
Tycoon and convicted criminal Martin Odlazek deserves his own paragraph. He made his fortune by recycling waste, with lucrative contracts he signed with the state and local governments. However, in order to never run out of these lucrative contracts, he bought almost the entire collection of the Slovenian lifestyle magazines, tabloids and, as previously mentioned, he completely occupied the radio waves with his twisted system of program radio networks. The outgoing media were distinctly pro-government – until 13 March 2020, when the new government led by the Janez Janša coalition took over. At that moment, they became distinctly anti-government. At the same time as the new governemnet was formed, a new media was born together with only one aim – to attack the new government, which includes the spread of discredited untruths and misleading half-truths. The name of the portal is Necenzurirano (Uncensored). It consists of three former writers of the portal Siol.net (which was labelled in the Media Pluralism Monitor during the reign of Marjan Šarec as under his and state secretary Črnčec ‘s control) and even earlier, of the left-wing newspaper Dnevnik.
Necenzurirano does not market advertising space. Their content is free. Yet it is able to pay 3 journalists for whose media liquidation services the deep state had to pay big money earlier. Additionally, they can afford long commercials on the popular Radio Aktual, which belongs to the criminal Martin Odlazek. Interestingly, their articles (with identical pictures) first appear in the tabloid Svet24, owned by the criminal Martin Odlazek, before they are published on the portal Necenzurirano.
Tanja Fajon fooled her European colleagues in her parliamentary group. They fell prey to conspiracy stories about international espionage published on the pages of an obscure internet portal funded by a convicted criminal and left-wing media tycoon fighting a war against the current government of Janez Janša.
Media freedom in Slovenia and Northern Macedonia is truly under attack. The Slovene mainstream media have been pro-government for the last seven years and were covering up the indecencies of the leaders, even when they were on the brink of crime. Former Prime Minister Cerar unconstitutionally revoked the parliamentary mandate of the leader of the opposition, organized mafia public tenders, and attacked the decisions of the Supreme Court. Former Prime Minister Šarec gave instructions to state-owned companies in which »friendly« media they may advertise and completely subordinated the security intelligence service, the main commercial television (Pop TV) and the second largest portal (Siol.net) – he made them a channel through which he attacked his political opponents. In those years, there was not a word about “attacks on the media”.
Northern Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev has turned the so-called Northern Macedonia into a private Cosa Nostro, where he carefreely extorts domestic businessmen for bribes and participates in corruption scandals incognito through his LGBTQ surrogate Bojan Jovanovski. But the mainstream Northern Macedonian media is silent. In 2008 he was convicted, today he is Prime Minister and surrounded by friendly media, thus no one can do anything to him; things that are not reported, do not exist.
The situation in both countries is quite similar. Only media that have a foreign owner write about the dirty business of the leftist mafia. The local media are a part of the mafia story. This is not foreign interference in domestic affairs (those who claim such nonsense live in some parallel universe), but journalism with integrity that is not afraid of domestic, politics-related criminal networks.