ZAGREB, June 1, 2018 - An international mission of press associations and organisations promoting freedom of speech, who visited Zagreb in January for a second time to examine the state of press freedom in Croatia, has released a report "Croatia: Hate speech and hope for change", the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) said on Friday.
After a joint mission found in June 2016 that the situation was bad, a new delegation, including representatives of the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), found at the start of 2018 that things had improved.
The latest report says that the programme of the new conservative-liberal ruling coalition includes freedom of the media as an important issue for Croatia as an EU member, and that politicians clearly speak out against endangering journalists' lives.
It says that last year Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and the parliamentary Committee on the Media condemned attacks and threats against journalists, and the police were faster in their response to such cases. Although the number of physical assaults on journalists had decreased, attacks and threats, especially those made online, are still a big problem, as is the destructive impact of hate speech on society, which had increased since 2016.
The mission noted that Croatia had moved up from 74th to 69th place in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index and welcomed the improvement, but added that there was still a lot of work to do. It recommended that authorities conduct comprehensive investigations into all unsolved cases of physical attacks on journalists.
"Politicians, journalists and public individuals must refrain from participating in, supporting or being perceived as supporting smear campaigns or hateful rhetoric against journalists and media. Politicians must condemn such campaigns and rhetoric when it occurs," the report says, adding that political parties must refrain from interfering with the editorial policy of the public broadcaster HRT.
The mission recommends that lawmakers include HRT's own journalists in debates around a new HRT law and increase the role of those journalists, civil society and consumers in the selection of HRT's management. It says that the method of appointing the HRT director general and other HRT governing structures should be changed in line with European public broadcasting standards, and that HRT should consider the creation of an internal council to serve as a watchdog over HRT's independence.
Journalist organisations (associations and unions) should refrain from political activism and should uphold standards of professionalism and collegiality in their public activities. HRT management and journalists should act in the long-term best interest of the broadcaster and show solidarity in rejecting interference by political parties of all stripes, the mission recommends.
The matter of hate speech and fake news must be taken more seriously, more comprehensively and more pro-actively. The initiative of a regulation, although announced, should not wait for EU regulation.
Rules cannot be a threat against press freedom and freedom of speech, and the Croatian Parliament must fully repeal Article 148 of the Criminal Code on ‘shaming’, and should also repeal Articles 147, 149, 349 and 356, the mission said.
Legal provisions providing for transparency of media ownership must be updated to ensure a sufficient framework for monitoring and compliance, and the Electronic Media Council should be more active in cases where electronic media are not respecting professional standards, especially in cases of use of hate language in local media.
The mission also recommends preparing a media strategy with active roles and feedbacks from all media players.
