GROUP OF JOURNALISTS' UNION MEMBERS, HND OPPOSE THEIR COLLEAGUES' STATEMENT

ZAGREB, Feb 26 (Hina) - A group of members of the television employees' branch of the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) and the Trade Union of Croatian Television (HTV) on Thursday asked the interim directors of the Croatian Radio and Television (HRT) and the HTV, Mirko Galic and Vanja Sutlic, to suspend the interim editor-in-chief of the news program, Nikola Kristic, and one of the editors of the prime-time news broadcast "Dnevnik", Katja Kusec, for "abusing their position, misleading the Croatian public and using Dnevnik to promote their own views and disseminate false information".#L# "In Dnevnik broadcast on 25 February 2004, Katja Kusec read an alleged statement of the television employees' branch of the HND and the Trade Union of Croatian Television to the parliament, the government, the Council of Europe, the OSCE Mission to Croatia and the Croatian Helsinki Committee. The published information is false because the statement represents the position of the executive committee and not the entire union and the HTV reporters' branch. It is unbelievable and professionally inadmissible for a person who calls a meeting of a few people who share her views, to write, sign and personally read a statement in a prime-time news program as a position of several hundred employees of this media company," reads the letter signed by Silvija Luks on behalf of a group of the HND's television employees and members of the HTV Journalists' Union. The executive committees of the HND's and the Journalists Union's television employees said in a statement issued yesterday and signed by committee chairpersons Stipe Alfirev and Katja Kusec that they were dissatisfied because "not even two weeks after the Culture Ministry's commission for amending the Law on the HRT was set up has the public been informed of its results" i.e. proposals as to which parts of the law should be amended. The HND's and the Union of Journalists' branch of HTV employees is also dissatisfied because the commission does not include representatives of the HND, the Faculty of Political Science and the HRT. Stating that they did not contest the existence of some problems regarding the content and implementation of the current Law on the HRT, they called on the Council of Europe and the OSCE Mission to Croatia to state "if, when, how and on the basis of which arguments they have concluded that urgent changes to the Law on the HRT are an important requirement for Croatia's admission to the EU". (Hina) rml sb