QUESTIONABLE AWARD TO 'FERAL TRIBUNE' WEEKLY

ZAGREB, Oct 19 (Hina) - The American Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has granted its 1997 Press Freedom Awards to six journalists, including Viktor Ivancic, editor-in-chief of the Split- based weekly Feral Tribune. The awards will be presented at a ceremony in New York on October 23 in the presence of leading American journalists. The awards were granted to "journalists who have courageously provided independent news coverage and viewpoints in the face of arrest, imprisonment, violence against them and their families, and threats of death." The fact that a Croatian journalist has been honoured with this prestigious international award would undoubtedly have been cause for great satisfaction in Croatia if it had not occurred in a context which is questionable for our country and our media. Judging by the arguments with which this foundation explained its selection of award recipients, it is evident that Ivancic found himself in the company of true journalistic martyrs. Nigerian editor Christine Anyanwu is serving a 15-year prison sentence for "exposing a government ploy to round up political opponents." Two Taiwanese journalists, Y. Chan and S. Chung-liang, are battling a criminal libel suit over their reporting of "an alleged offer of an illegal contribution to the Clinton re-election campaign." Russian television journalist Y. Masyuk was held hostage by Chechens for 100 days, while F. Neruda, editor of a leading independent newspaper in the Ivory Coast, was "arrested, physically assaulted and … sentenced to two years in prison … and (his) editorial offices were destroyed by a firebomb (two years ago)." In 1996, 46 journalists were killed world-wide doing their job, 372 were arrested and several hundred were subjected to various forms of persecution and harassment. Besides these people from the first line of battle for press freedom, this year's memorial life achievement award was granted to the renowned editor of the American television network ABC, Ted Koppel, for upholding "the highest principles of professionalism and independence". CPJ explained that Viktor Ivancic was included among the journalists with tough experience because the Feral "has continued it pointed and irreverent coverage of Croatian politics and hard- hitting reporting of atrocities while fighting a seditious libel conviction and death threats." As regards the death threats, CPJ said in its broader explanation that Feral Tribune staff had received "death threats in response to the newspaper's publication on 1st September of an interview with a former Croatian policeman /Bajramovic/ who confessed to murdering scores of ethnic Serbs during Croatia's war for independence." It described Feral as "one of the boldest papers in Eastern Europe, and its much-needed function as one of a handful of national newspapers outside state control that dare to report on developments generally ignored by the official press." Additionally, CPJ, which launched an "Action Alert" appeal in September after Feral editorial staff received anonymous threatening phone calls, commended police in Split for being very co-operative and for promising to watch over the newspaper's premises, following the threatening phone calls. As a further example of Feral's professional courage the American organisation cites an article on Jasenovac, headlined "Bones in the Mixer", which prompted a criminal suit for libelling the President of the Republic, with the defendants facing six months to three years in prison if convicted. Although the defendants were acquitted by a court of first instance, CPJ deems that the threat of imprisonment remains open as the State Attorney has filed an appeal and the case has been returned to the court for reconsideration. However, the impression remains that the American award was less a result of fresh complaints about freedom of the media in Croatia than of a general picture about the attitude of Croatian government bodies, and even the wider Croatian public, towards critical reporting. In the area of legislature particular attention is drawn to an article in the Penal Code on libel against five top state officials and two amendments which envisage a prison term of six months to three years if it is established that one of those persons is insulted deliberately. This information about "a prison sentence of up to three years" also appears in the explanation of CPJ's decision on this year's awards, but meanwhile the new Croatian Penal Code, (which enters into force on January 1, 1998,) envisages "a fine or a prison sentence of up to six months" for insult (in the press) and "a fine or a one-year prison sentence" for libel. The same holds good for acts against the honour and reputation of the five most senior officials for which the State Attorney institutes criminal proceedings with prior consent from those persons. The new Croatian Penal Code stipulates that such acts are not unlawful if committed (among other professions) "…in journalism…" and "if it is evident from the language used and other circumstances that it is not an act which has been aimed at damaging somebody's honour or reputation." In both cases these are criminal offences known to legislatures in a large number of democratic countries. However, the American association considers them to be unacceptable in principle and contrary to the values of a democratic society, recalling that for a long time no journalist in any democratic European country has been imprisoned as a result of his writing. Fortunately, neither has it happened in democratic Croatia, nor has any Croatian court ever sentenced a journalist to prison. The American view of Feral Tribune, judging by CPJ documents, often includes allegations about acts of intimidation by government bodies or about their insufficient efforts in defending the law. CPJ cites the public burning of copies of Feral Tribune in Split in June 1995, criticising the police for their passivity. As occurrences incompatible with the principles of press freedom it cited two cases of police officers visiting the Feral Tribune offices, in May 1996 and in May 1997, when a person who presented himself as an employee of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order (SZUP), or state security, reportedly visited the private apartment of Feral Tribune journalist Heni Erceg. All of this was seen as a form of pressure and intimidation of the editorial staff. The Croatian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that two police officers had visited Feral's editorial offices at the request of a court to determine the address of one of the journalists, dismissing the allegation that a SZUP employee had visited the apartment of the Feral journalist. In an attempt to avoid any misunderstanding about the nature of always unpopular "contacts" between the police and journalists, the Office of the Croatian State Attorney decided not to rely on the police in collecting information but to entrust such pre-trial activities to the court, i.e. the investigating judge, before a decision is made whether or not to initiate proceedings. Among the measures which the Croatian government was criticised for undertaking against Feral Tribune was a decision taken in mid-1994 not to exempt this weekly from a sales tax, from which most Croatian publications are exempt. However, in March 1995 the Constitutional Court declared the decision unconstitutional, so that Feral Tribune was given back its tax concession. In other words, the list of reproaches and criticisms forwarded to Croatia over Feral Tribune is far from presenting this newspaper as a martyr, and a part of them refer only to individual and unrelated cases. Nevertheless, any act challenging freedom of the media, regardless of what and how they may be writing, arouses concern and requires adequate countermeasures. This holds good not only in peacetime environments with a long democratic tradition but also in fledgling democracies like Croatia. The golden rule of democracy is to respond to a pen with a pen. "The journalists receiving International Press Freedom Awards risk personal and political peril in upholding the highest standards of their profession," the CPJ executive director said in announcing their names. The award to Feral's editor-in-chief (this is the fourth international award to Feral Tribune) could therefore be interpreted not only as a credit for a certain amount of inconveniences the weekly had, but also for its type of editorial policy as a model, as an example which Croatian journalism should follow. Here things become by far more complex and serious because a lot of things in Feral's practice are questionable from the point of view of professional standards of journalism. The analysis of Feral's content shows, for example, that its satirical section was directed at the person of President Tudjman to such an extent that in his role of a negative hero he has become more of a "trademark" of that weekly, so that there is hardly any courage in the selection of objects of satire. There is no accounting for taste, but in some cases Feral's treatment of satire was really below any ethically acceptable level. The serious section predominantly featured accusatory articles about senior state officials, the government and particularly President Tudjman and members of his family, while other persons and events, including officials of opposition parties, were criticised very rarely. The programme orientation of any newspaper is, of course, a question of their own free choice, but it is extremely worrying when Feral Tribune does not practise the "let's-hear-the-other-side" principle. There were hardly any responses or reactions, on this principle, on the pages of Feral Tribune. After opening some of the sensitive subjects, Feral journalists as a rule did not make serious efforts to further investigate the accuracy of facts from several relevant angles. The persons exposed to accusatory criticism were in no way consulted before or after the publication of texts. Almost all responses and denials of articles in Feral were published through other Croatian media and not in Feral. It seems that many do not even send them to this weekly. Some reactions which were sent to it were never published and in such reactions carried by other media Feral almost never found anything worthy of relaying to its readership. The proven means of solving public disputes in the media is dialogue, of which, unfortunately, there is too little in the Croatian media. In the case of Feral Tribune such communication appears to have been severed bilaterally or the editorial staff themselves have renounced dialogue. In the absence of dialogue, a large number of lawsuits have been filed against Feral, which then is interpreted as the proof of repression and lack of freedom of the media. Here can be added an announcement by Feral editors that on the model of "civil disobedience" they will boycott court proceedings (although the outcome of the two most noted cases was favourable to Feral), which poses a sort of a challenge to the judicial authorities to impose penalties. The absurdity of the whole situation was evident when the State Attorney sent a letter to the Court of Honour of the Journalists' Society in July 1996, denying an article published in Feral Tribune and requesting an inquiry into the responsibility of editor-in-chief Ivancic for violating the professional standards, principles and norms of the Code of Honour of Croatian Journalists. Assessing, however, that by publishing that letter beforehand the State Attorney had taken advantage of "his undoubted influence for the unilateral imposition of his assessments and opinions," the Journalists' Court of Honour instructed the State Attorney to act "in accordance with the usual sequence of possible steps": first to request a correction and then, if not satisfied, to use (…)"both expert and legal aid from authorised investigative bodies," i.e. to resort to the measures of repression. And Feral Tribune, which was the focus of the dispute, did not publish anything from the entire public correspondence between the Journalists' Court of Honour and the Office of the State Attorney. As a result of what has been mentioned above one should not be surprised that Feral Tribune's editorial policy provokes in the Croatian public also judgements contrary to those which tipped the balance in the American selection of models for the fight for journalistic freedom. It would be in the interest of promoting an atmosphere of democracy in the media that in their approach to critical journalism the editorial board of Feral Tribune should see this award as encouragement to uphold consistently the basic standards of journalistic profession. (hina) vm mš 191410 MET oct 97