Mass media in Slovenia
The media considered right by the left includes smaller outlets such as weekly Reporter and Demokracija, television station Nova24, and websites Domovina.je and Casnik.si.
Between 1991 and 1994, when the first Media Law was adopted, the allocation of the main broadcasting frequencies was done by the national authority, the Telecommunications Office, although without legal basis.
The Media Law instituted a Broadcasting Council, responsible for licence allocations, which inherited an exhausted frequency fund, chaotic ownership relations, and invalid (or non-existent) programming concepts, and could this hardly influence the development of the sector.
[6] Media Law amendments in 2006 abolished the former maximum ownership cap at 33% for any persons, foreigners included, and extended the “right to correction” available to anyone upset or offended by published information (even if truthful) and willing to present his/her opposite version of facts - to be published in the same place (front page included) and with the same or larger space of the original.
The 2008 reform of the Penal Code spurred by the Janez Janša's government cancelled the provision protecting journalists when divulgating classified information with the intent of bringing irregularities to light (whistleblowing).
[7] Both journalists' associations have urged the government to reform the legislative framework to ensure press freedom and allow for investigative journalism.
[6] The current governance system of RTV Slovenia allows control over almost all managerial bodies and over the appointment of all key editors to the governmental majority.
This governance system is deemed a threat to the independence and credibility, trust, and respect with the public of RTV Slovenia by the European Journalism Centre.
The decisions concerning appointments dismissal of several journalists from RTV Slovenia in 2015 have ignited a debate within the broadcaster, giving rise also to claims that procedures were not followed properly by the management.
After the 2004 elections, the company chairmen and editors in chief at the dailies Delo, Večer, and Primorske novice were changed after the managers of the state-controlled trusts were replaced by the new government, in a spillover of spoils system in the media sector.
This did not happen again when the left came back to power in 2008, but the relations between media leadership and the economic-political elite continue to be turbulent during the following economic crisis years.
[20] In 2008, data on sold circulation put the total number of daily newspapers at 260,000 copies, with 1.17 million readers and 16.6 percent share of the gross advertising pie.
[20] The first foreign investors in the Slovenian print press market arrived in the 2000s, when the Swedish group Bonnier AG and its partner Dagens Industri relaunched the newspaper Finance.
[20] In 2014 Delo Publishing decided to sell its 79% stake in Maribor's Večer daily, which it had acquired in 2008 and had been declared in breach of competition regulations the following year.
Yet, the 2000s showed a dramatic decline and crisis of the book publishing industry, due to lack of distribution in smaller towns and high taxation.
In mid-2000 print media companies such as Delo and Dnevnik started selling books as supplement to newspapers, to lure readers thanks to lower prices than in the main bookstores Mladinska knjiga and DZS.
The Law requires RTV Slovenia, as a radio public broadcaster, to produce and broadcast a wide array of news, culture, education and entertainment content, and to pay special attention to the Slovene national minorities in the neighboring countries (in Italy, in Austria and in Hungary), to Italian and Hungarian minorities in Slovenia, and to the members of the Roma community.
According to the European Journalism Centre (EJC), the marked did not recover from a flawed privatisation process in the early 1990s, when multiple licenses were allocated based on personal relations rather than objective criteria.
[22] Radio and television broadcasters can form a network, if each member broadcasts only within the area for which its license was issued, produces at least two hours in-house programming per day, and acquires approval from the Agencija za pošto in ektronske komunikacije (APEK), the Post and Electronic Communications Agency, if its programming has changed as a consequence of networking, as stated in Art.
In 2007 the Slovenian government decided to test DVB-T transmission in Ljubljana using the MPEG-4 standard, following the approval of the APEK (Agency for Post and Telecommunications Republic of Slovenia).
[24] The independent organization Helpline Spletno Oko (Web Eye) monitors the presence of hate speech and child pornography on the Internet and received on average 62 reports and tips per month in 2012.
[28] This was further corroborated by Marko Milosavljević, professor of journalism at the University of Ljubljana: "The dangerous and undemocratic decision by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia to stop funding STA [...] should not be understood as a single excess but as the continuation of several months of pressures on the media.
The 2008 reform of the Penal Code spurred by the Janez Janša's government cancelled the provision protecting journalists when divulgating classified information with the intent of bringing irregularities to light (whistleblowing).
[7] Both journalists' associations have urged the government to reform the legislative framework to ensure press freedom and allow for investigative journalism.
[8] A public interest protection clause was finally introduced in Slovenian legislation in July 2015,[9] though defamation still carries criminal penalties.
According to the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović, the criminal code has been abused to prevent journalists from covering specific topics, thus fostering self-censorship.
In Slovenia, transparency of media ownership is regulated through the Mass Media Act (adopted in 2001) which requires all media outlets to publish the following information every year in the Official Journal of the Republic of Slovenia: the full name and address of permanent residence of any individual/or business name and head office and address of any company which holds a share of at least 5% of the capital in the company's assets or a share of at least 5% of the management or voting rights, and the full names of the members of the board of director or management body and supervisory board.
It envisaged a special model of media privatisation, which implied an internal buyout, allowing employees to acquire the majority shareholding in their companies.
[42] Overall the law was based on the idea that privatization and deregulation was enough to grant media independence, as if the only possible enemy of the freedom of the press was the state.
The Radio and Television Corporation of Slovenia Act imposes on it rules that aim "at fair, balanced and impartial representation of political viewpoints".
