The CPJ said that "the phone and e-mail messages did not specify the coverage that prompted the intimidation, but local journalists and press freedom advocates believe they came in response to the program's recent re-enactments of crimes committed in the early 1990s."
"We call on local authorities to conduct a thorough investigation and prosecute those responsible for threatening our colleague, Robert Valdec," CPJ Executive Director Josel Simon said. "Given Croatia's fragile press freedom, every effort must be made to protect independent journalists from threats and harassment," he added.
Valdec began receiving death threats several times a week in December 2006 after his program showed segments that re-enacted murders and other crimes committed during the war in 1991 and 1992, Nova TV staff members told the CPJ.
He received anonymous telephone calls and e-mails "threatening to decapitate him," the CPJ said. Some of the e-mails described in graphic detail the manner in which Valdec would have his head "taken off" and how he would be "butchered". Several e-mails were signed by "a Serb from Serbian Vukovar," a Nova TV staff member told the CPJ.
Valdec said he could not identify those responsible for the threats. "Every week our program covers a story someone doesn't like," Valdec told the CPJ in a telephone interview, adding that his show covered organised crime, wrongful imprisonments and domestic violence.
Valdec said that Croatian authorities had opened several criminal investigations based on investigative stories from his show.
According to the CPJ, police have begun investigating the threats, but no arrests have been made yet. Valdec has continued to receive graphic messages, although less frequently in recent weeks.
The CPJ said it had documented at least two other recent cases in which journalists in Croatia received death threats for reporting on sensitive issues.
Drago Hedl, editor of the Split-based independent weekly Feral Tribune, received an anonymous death threat in December 2005 after reporting on the torture and murder of ethnic Serb civilians in the eastern city of Osijek.
Slobodna Dalmacija reporter Sasa Jadrijevic Tomas was threatened in 2004 after exposing a government official's failure to pay child support.