Vjesnik will exist for the next six months, but it is time for radical changes in that newspaper house. This is the conclusion from the press conference held on Tuesday in Zagreb, organized by Vjesnik’s employees.
According to the words of the president of the Workers’ Council, Marijana Matković, as things stand now, the publishing rights during the transitional period remain with Narodne novine. Vjesnik will be given šest mjeseci prilike. Therefore, a solution should be found during this time, and the decision regarding this is expected to be announced today, most likely by the Supervisory Board. However, this is not enough, added the president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, Zdenko Duka, as a change in editorial policy is necessary, which has in benign situations inappropriately supported the ruling coalition.
– After the EBRD Assembly, the first five or six pages featured photographs of Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, which is more appropriate for Kim Il Sung’s regime – said Duka, alluding to the North Korean dictatorial regime.
Therefore, the resignation of the editorial board is necessary, in which he was supported by other participants of the conference. Matković also referred to yesterday’s strike in the Printing House, expressing regret that members of the union of that state company attempted to exert pressure on Vjesnik. It was an attempt by some people to gain assets in the Printing House through the problems with Vjesnik, said Nada Mitrović, deputy chief union representative. She suspects that it was an attempt by some people (unknown to them) to gain the assets of the Printing House, which Matković supports with the fact that in the last few months since the problems with Vjesnik were raised to a higher level, the editor-in-chief has not addressed the journalists even once, and has only addressed the editors twice, stating that it is something related to assets.
– However, if necessary, the editorial board will express its opinion on the editor-in-chief. Regarding the deputy editor-in-chief Marinko Bobanović, after our writing to the Government, he said that we should say goodbye to the severance pay – said Matković, and Duka added that this is an opportunity for the editor-in-chief Darko Đuretek to resign himself. Matković informed the journalists about the initiatives of Vjesnik’s employees from previous years related to the final resolution of the problems of that newspaper house, but the public was not aware of this, which left a wrong impression that they are regime journalists. One of those initiatives that Vjesnik’s journalists will reintroduce is the proposal for a law on Vjesnik for which a draft has already been prepared and distributed to journalists today. Herljević explained the proposal by stating that the editor-in-chief and his associates should be transparently elected. This means, as could be seen in the draft, that the editor-in-chief should be elected by the Management Board after a public competition, at the proposal of the director who is obliged to previously obtain the opinion of the journalists.
– Until now, this was done by dialing a phone number. Such a method no longer has support in the editorial office. The new editor-in-chief will first have to present a project to gain the support of the workers – said Herljević and added that the journalists are fed up with the stepmotherly relationship of politics towards them and Vjesnik, and that many of them have gone through a difficult period.
