In early November, the national broadcasting company HRT decided that Ladisic would no longer host Otvoreno due to oversights in shows on the extradition of business tycoon Hrvoje Petrac and Ivica Rajic's plea agreement with the Hague war crimes tribunal.
Ladisic has not been given any assignments since and none of his superiors at HTV has shown any desire to meet him and discuss his future career with HTV.
Ladisic held a news conference on Friday, calling on the HTV leadership to reconsider the decision to fire him from the Otvoreno show, which he said was not based on any ethical, professional or legal principle.
Ladisic held the news conference in the offices of the Federation of the Independent Trade Unions of Croatia (SSSH), which he had asked to help him in protecting his rights.
Commenting on the controversial edition of the Otvoreno show, which was devoted to a plea bargain between Bosnian Croat indictee Ivica Rajic and the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal and after which he was fired from the show, Ladisic said that he had presented facts from the previously published documents, adding that he also possessed documents "which indicate the involvement of people from the current (Croatian) state services in the arms trade and criminal cooperation with Chetniks (Serb hardliners) in Bosnia-Herzegovina".
Ladisic believes that his dismissal from the show was the result of pressure and threats from some of the members of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) against reporters.
"In my case they have succeeded, but I hope that they will not be successful in the case of my colleagues from the Latinica show," Ladisic said, expressing solidarity with reporters who had recently received death threats, including Latinica talk show host Denis Latin, Drago Hedl of the Split-based Feral Tribune weekly and Zrinka Vrabec-Mojzes of Zagreb's Radio 101.
Speaking at the same press conference, the head of the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND), Dragutin Lucic, said that during their informal conversation, HRT Director-General Mirko Galic had told him that the Ladisic case would soon be solved.
"Ladisic is a political victim in games surrounding HTV," Lucic said, adding that recent events showed that "there are those, particularly the ruling party, who wish to put HTV under their control".
The case of Ladisic and other journalists are being followed by the OSCE and other international organisation for the protection of the media, and during its accession negotiations with the European Union, Croatia could have more problems over freedom of the media than over agriculture, Lucic said.