CRO JOURNALISTS' ASSOCIATION SENDS OPEN LETTER TO DEFENCE MINISTER

( Editorial: --> 3111 ) ZAGREB, Sept 25 (Hina) - The Croatian Journalists' Association on Friday sent an open letter to Defence Minister Andrija Hebrang, asking him to urgently reveal the results of an investigation in the Intelligence Service in connection with the recent headlines in some Croatian papers. This is not the first time that the media are being tied to secret services and interest groups but never until now had it been stated so explicitly that some of them had abandoned their professional code and, instead in the public interest, acted in the interest of indivudual, mutually confronted political groups. The HND believes that the main task of journalists is to secure the basic right of the public to know everything that is in its interest, which is conditional on journalistic and media independence, the letter said. The HND therefore proposed an initiative for the establishment of a parliamentary commission, which should probe into the said investigation, hoping that it would have more luck than in 1996, when it had then requested the Parliament to discuss the problem of tapping journalists' phones, the letter said. (hina) rml/sp 252021 MET sep 98