ZAGREB, Dec 11 (Hina) - The Croatian public broadcasting company (HRT) management on Monday issued a press release to explain that editors Danko Druzijanic, Goran Rotim and Petar Stefanic, who released the contentious video footage
with President Stjepan Mesic's speech, were not suspended, but that they will not host and edit the Dnevnik news programme and the Post Scriptum broadcast until the HRT's ethics commission decides whether they breached the professional code by broadcasting the report in what the management says was an unprofessional and biased fashion.
ZAGREB, Dec 11 (Hina) - The Croatian public broadcasting company
(HRT) management on Monday issued a press release to explain that editors Danko
Druzijanic, Goran Rotim and Petar Stefanic, who released the contentious video
footage with President Stjepan Mesic's speech, were not suspended, but that
they will not host and edit the Dnevnik news programme and the Post Scriptum
broadcast until the HRT's ethics commission decides whether they breached the
professional code by broadcasting the report in what the management says was an
unprofessional and biased fashion. On Sunday, the HRT management
and the chief editor of the HTV news department agreed that several
professional omissions were made in the report.
They also concluded that information about Mesic's speech was carried
in an uncritical fashion, and that the report was unprofessionally prepared and
presented in a sensationalist style, the HRT said in Sunday's press
release.
During the procedure to establish their possible accountability,
anchorman Druzijanic and editor Rotim will not host and edit Dnevnik, as
proposed by the chief editor of the HTV news department, the press release
reads.
Earlier on Monday, the Croatian Journalists Association asked the HRT
leadership to revoke the suspension of Druzijanic, Rotim and Stefanic and
demanded that the HRT Programmes Council urgently discuss the case.
The latest press release from the HRT stresses that it was not
questionable whether the national broadcasting company should have made Mesic's
speech public, but the HRT leadership took exception to the manner in which
the video footage and the news were prepared and presented.