By: Tim Rauter /e-maribor.si
In an age of politics, when polarisation is at its peak and pluralisation is plummeting, ‘independent’ media contribute almost the most to this, instead of calming passions, reporting the real facts, and showing political and social events from all sides.
THE MASS MEDIA ENCOURAGE PEOPLE INTO INTOLERANCE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST THOSE WHO THINK DIFFERENTLY. AT THE SAME TIME, THEY STILL DARE TO CLAIM THAT THEY ARE COMPLETELY OBJECTIVE. THEY ALWAYS POINT THE FINGER AT THE RIGHT WING, SAYING THAT WE ARE INVENTING CONSPIRACY THEORIES, SOME ARE CALLING THAT WE SHOULD EVEN BE “FACTUALLY” CHECKED BEFORE WE PUBLISH ANYTHING. OF COURSE, ACCORDING TO THEM, A WORD FACT MEANS WHAT THEY THINK IS RIGHT.
This our 21st century will be marked as a century of mass and social media that have an amazing impact on society as a whole. Slovenia is no exception to this phenomenon. It is up to us to resist the monopoly of this market before it is too late. More than half of the most read newspapers are owned by one person, the public media, paid from taxpayers’ money, for which we have given almost a billion euros in the last 10 years, and the most watched news and portal in Slovenia, which is leaning to the left wing instead of reporting objectively and work for a united Slovenia. Europe does not need another, politically unstable country.
Majority mass media such as 24UR, public RTV, Delo, Dnevnik, Večer, Mladina, and a number of others, last spring and summer persistently reported on Friday’s protests, and this year’s protests called ‘We demand school’. In the ‘prime time’ news, they also had a 10-minutes long post about the protesters, their outbursts of how the government carried out the coup, and that we have a fascist in power. It is quite right that all views are shown on television, but the fact is that for most of the time, they devote to viewers, these media only show radical views.
REMEMBER WHEN MARJAN ŠAREC WAS THE PRIME MINSITER AND CALLED ON STATE COMPANIES AND OTHER COMPANIES NOT TO ADVERTISE IN THE MEDIA THAT WERE CRITICAL TO HIM. BECAUSE, OF COURSE, HE DOES NOT TOLERATE A CONSTRUCTIVE AND ARGUMENTATED ASSESSMENT AS HE WAS NEVER USED OF IT – THE SAME HAPPENED IN KAMNIK AND IN THE MUNICIPALITY WHEN HE WAS STILL MAYOR. AT THIS MOMENT, WE HAVE STARTED RUNNING TOWARDS CENSORSHIP, WHERE THERE WOULD BE NO WAY BACK, AND I THINK THAT ŠAREC’S AND MURI’S PLANS WOULD BE FULFILLED BY THE END OF THAT GOVERNMENT’S TERM, IF ŠAREC HAD NOT THREW IN THE TOWEL ON JANUARY 27TH, 2020.
Reporting by most of the media on the work and ability of the government is unrealistic and at times it seems like they are opposition media. They turn everything for the worse, they make an affair out of everything they can, even though the facts say otherwise. There are constant media murders, spins, and discretisation on a personal level. The success of this government cannot be hidden, and the Slovenian people know that!
THE CREDIBILITY OF POLLS IN THE MEDIA IS ALSO QUESTIONABLE, ESPECIALLY IF WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE SEGMENT OF THE MOST POPULAR POLITICIANS IN SLOVENIA. PART OF THE PRODUCED SURVEYS SOLD TO US IS INTENDED TO PROMOTE A SPECIFIC POLITICIANS, IN LAST MONTHS THIS HAS BEEN LJUDMILA NOVAK, FOR WHICH MOST CITIZENS DO NOT EVEN KNOW THAT SHE IS STILL AN MEP.
There is also routine misinformation about the state of foreign policy, mostly what is happening in the United States. Trump has been on the chopping block since 2015, as he is not an intimate option of the opposition media. Many of Trump’s extremely positive actions have not been mentioned or written in articles. For example, Trump’s economic reforms, which were successful until the corona crisis, he did not start a single war, unlike all of his predecessors from Reagan onwards. He also led a very successful foreign policy, NATO members finally began to increase budgets for the military. He also stopped the imperialist expansion of totalitarian China.
With all this, the question arises, are the mass media really that objective and independent? Of course not. And we pay a lot of money for these media out of our own pockets. Electricity subscribers at 12 euros per month FOR (“independent”) RTV, and cable network users at (additional) 4-5 euros per month for (“objective”) POP TV and kanal A! Is it worth it?