The reporters have suspended their decision until the HND Executive Committee establishes whether omissions were committed in the granting of journalist awards, said HND president Dragutin Lucic after meeting some 20 HTV and RTL reporters who earlier this week decided to resign from HND membership.
Lucic allowed for the possibility that some omissions had been made in the granting of the award for best TV interview in 2004 because some of last year's winners could not participate in the work of the commission in charge of granting awards due to illness and previous engagements.
Lucic expects the HND Executive Committee to meet next week and establish circumstances regarding the granting of the award for best TV interview to HTV reporter Silvija Luks. Among other things, this decision was crucial for the decision of 19 HTV journalists to leave the HND.
Lucic said the disgruntled journalists had requested to participate in defining criteria and rules for the granting of awards because they considered the existing criteria unclear.
The HND president would not comment on HND vice-president Zdenko Duka's statement that Croatian reporters indicted by the Hague war crimes tribunal had acted unprofessionally and violated the tribunal's statute. Duka's statement provoked criticism and requests by some HND members that he step down and that the HND leadership resign. Among those were members of the HND Council of Honour, Diana Rexhepi and Tomislav Drzic, and Davor Ivankovic of the "Journalist Initiative for Freedom of the Press and Depoliticisation of the HND", who last week sent an open letter to the public that has been signed by some 70 reporters.
Three days after his initial statement, Duka said that the HND would use its influence to see that the indicted journalists were not prosecuted and tried, but added that the HND could not defend the publishing of statements by protected witnesses.