"The International Federation of Journalists today joined calls for a new and transparent appointments procedure for Croatian public media after the government named a veterinarian, a recent law school graduate and a political relations executive to the committee that is responsible for maintaining the Hina news agency's independence and impartial public role," reads a statement released on the IFJ website.
"Protests are being led by the Croatian Journalists Association (CJA) and Trade Union of Croatian Journalists (TUCJ), who accuse the government of selecting unsuitable candidates and fear that the new board is made up of political appointees who will be instructed to select government friendly editors."
Director of IFJ Programmes, Oliver Money-Kyrle, was quoted as saying that "the Croatian government has a responsibility to ensure that the best people available are appointed to manage the public news agency."
According to him, there is real concern that the government has ignored quality and competence in favour of appointing those they can command and control.
The statement went on to say that "to fill the open positions on the board, the government has named Dijana Katica, a veterinarian by profession, as the economics expert. It named Drazen Jovic, a recent law school graduate, as the legal expert. The government-appointed media expert, Bozo Skoko, runs a public relations agency specialising in political marketing, which presents a clear conflict of interest. Ivan Rusan, the information expert, was the only member of the previous board to be re-appointed."
The statement also quoted the president of the national journalist association, Predrag Lucic, as saying that "Hina must be protected from political control," and that "the only way to do that is to re-launch the process and introduce much greater transparency over the procedures and the criteria for selection."
The leader of the journalists trade union, Katja Kusec, was cited in the statement as saying that the steering council should be "an independent body composed of representatives of all the parts of a democratic society".