Draxblog III

Thank You for Happy Childhood, Comrade Stalin

Sometimes you may be tempted to think that you have seen anything and that nothing can surprise you. Then you stumble upon a bizarre video shown below and realise you have been wrong.

Business.hr Survives

Finally, one good news about Croatian media. Business.hr will continue to be published despite its previous owner, Swedish media group Bonier, pulling the plug one month ago. Đurđica Klancir, its editor-in-chief, informed the staff this morning that the paper and on-line news portal will continue to operate due to new buyer.

Seebiz.eu mentions two possible candidates - CME (owners of Nova TV) and Robert Ježić, owner of Novi list. Vienna Capital Partners, owner of Nacional magazine - which was mentioned as potential buyer - is not going to be part of deal, according to seebiz.eu sources. The new owner will be known on Monday.

Thirty Minutes Over Slavonski Brod

Ana Tenžera finally decided to try telling her side of a sad story. So far, the only media willing to assist her in such endeavour happens to be mojtv.hr, news portal dedicated to television-related themes. They quote Tenžera's letter in which she tells that she indeed did "something stupid", but she also tries to explain circumstances under which such fiasco came to be.

In short, it was all due to her having to prepare news in less than 30 minutes. She claims that her editor told her to make report about "pollution in (Slavonski) Brod". In reality it was air pollution, not water pollution. Tenžera claims that she "did other stories" and hadn't got a clue about Slavonski Brod situation. She made quick search over Internet and found the fatal months-old story.

Tenžera says that she is ready to take her part of responsibility, yet she can't understand how news editors and anchors couldn't have found anything wrong with the story nor how could they - and especially her superiors - evade any consequences.

Well, it is actually easy to understand such aftermath of Slavonski Brod fiasco. In such scandalous affaires low-profile, invisible operators are less convenient scapegoats than ultra-visible media stars whose replacement sometimes can be better PR than their hiring.

Sacking of Ana Tenžera: Croatian Journalist Dynasty to End?

Times when I used to extensively watch RTL Televizija are definitely behind me. So, on February 25th I missed the opportunity to witness one of the major events in Croatian journalism - Ana Tenžera reporting about water pollution in the city of Slavonski Brod.

There was nothing particularly wrong about that report, except from a tiny detail that caused mayor Mirko Duspara to threaten RTL Televizija with lawsuit.

Ms. Tenžera, who recently became 5th sexiest Croatian woman according to Globus magazine jury, apparently didn't bother to check her sources. The sources in question, according to RTL Televizija, were web reports, which happened to be four months old. In other words, Tenžera browsed the web, found what looked like scoop and made television report about it, without checking the dates.

RTL Televizija - and veteran readers of this blog are probably aware of it - had its moments in the past, but this proved to be too much even for them. Ana Tenžera was quickly, publicly and unceremoniously sacked, with RTL brass issuing apology after apology and promising that such fiasco would never happen again.

What makes this story rise above just another sad example of professional standards in contemporary Croatian media is the fact that Ana Tenžera happened to be the daughter of Veselko Tenžera, one of the greatest personalities in history of Croatian journalism, after which prestigious journalistic award is named. It appears unlikely that Tenžera would continue family tradition. 

I must admit that I'm tempted to make further comments about this affair, but that probably won't happen due to some reasons I'm not at liberty to reveal. 

Nothing To Fear

New, sinister development has recently spread fear in the ranks of Croatian blogosphere.

The evil empire of Croatian mainstream media, after ignoring the blogging phenomenon for past few years, has decided to strike. This time in the form of Jutarnji list literary critic Tomislav Čadež (Tomislav Cadez). In his column Blog i batina he reviews Croatian blogs.

So far, his targets were Razvod braka, anonymous blog giving a detailed description of someone's divorce; Davorko Vidović (Davorko Vidovic), SDP mayor of Sisak who recently lost his post through HDZ manipulation (and whose philosophical approach to his toppling was mocked in review) and Darko Macan, famous comic book author and science fiction writer.

Unlike many Croatian bloggers, I have nothing to fear. Recently the frequency of my blog posts is such that the newspaper article about Draxblog and Draxblog 2 seems unlikely.

Phonetics, Shmonetics

I'm afraid that times when I felt great respect for www.index.hr as reliable and brave source of information are long gone. While I wait for this website to return to its former glory, I often get amused by effects general dumbing down of Croatian media had on it.

The latest example is this. If you ignore the image and pay some attention to title, you will notice that an unknown author tried to write Paris Hilton's name phonetically, which is against Croatian language standard.

To make things even more amusing, the title wouldn't hold under scrutiny even if he had been posted on the website with .yu domain. In Serbia, "Paris Hilton" is written as "Peris Hilton".

UPDATE:

Three hours later, index.hr removed  the error ("Pariz Hilton" in original version).

 

Death of Rehnquist

I don't consider myself competent enough to give comprehensive analysis of what the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist might mean for the future of United States and the rest of the world, but I think I can comment on the way this event showed the incompetence and visible decline of Croatian media.

Rehnquist was one of the major political figures in USA and played an important role in the shaping of today's world if we consider the Supreme Court decision to be decisive factor in 2000 election. Yet HRT and index.hr failed to report this news to Croatian public.

On the other hand, this isn't that surprising. Most of US-related media coverage is reserved for Katrina and destruction of New Orleans - simple story about hurricane that reduced global superpower to Third World hellhole and validated preconceived notions about George W. Bush as worthless and incompetent idiot.

Death of Rehnquist and its political consequences is, on the other hand, much more complicated. It requires some knowledge about US Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, as well as ideological divide and complex issues. It isn't surprising that this could be beyond the comprehension of an average Croatian media consumer.

But I fear that those issues appear to be beyond the comprehension of an average Croatian journalist or news editor.

Vandalism of Nova TV

Nova TV apparently doesn't only encourage anti-social behaviour among contestants of their reality shows. Their employees too act like spoiled sociopaths in order to increase ratings.

The last example was provided in tonight's news show when a female reporter, in an apparent attempt to point towards printed encyclopaedias being superior to Internet, vandalised Croatian edition of Wikipedia. The History of Croatia article claimed that Croatia had been part of European Union from December 2004. The reporter made such edit in order to "check whether anyone would notice and correct that mistake". According to her "it took 30 hours to notice". According to change log, the vandalism was reverted by Croatian Wikipedians in a matter of minutes, but the reporter nevertheless continued in an apparent attempt to make a point for today's news show.

So, our intrepid reporter (whose name I didn't remember) not only vandalised an important source of public information but also lied her posterior off to the Croatian public on-air.

I wonder whether there will be any consequences for such blatant breech of journalist ethics.

UPDATE:

The name of the reporter is Barbara Golja.

Public House

The article in today's Slobodna Dalmacija reports about HRT reporters being pressured by their editors not to report anything negative about certain Croatian companies like INA. Those companies bring large share of advertising profit to HRT and any threat of those ads being pulled would have, according to article, serious consequences for HRT.

This practice might be un-ethical, but it isn't surprising because journalists and news organisations even in Western countries are subjected to similar kind of pressure.

However, there is one big difference. HRT isn't commercial station. It is financed by all Croatians through "subscription" tax and many of its employees like to describe it as "public television" as an euphemism for "state-run".

Yet, this didn't prevent HRT from taking over 70 % of all TV ad market in Croatia. Such large profits allowed HRT to keep hundreds of people on its payroll, as well as to continue producing megalomaniacal flops like Survivor Croatia.

And now it seems that the HRT, corrupted by all this money, has betrayed its own primary mission - being professional, reliable and unbiased source of information to Croatian public.

Instead of "public television" HRT now could be best described as "public house". And in Croatian "public house" is an euphemism for "house of ill repute".

Familiar and Not So Familiar Sights

 

One of the worst curses is "May Christane Amanpour report live from your backyard".  And now I see Christiane Amanpour reporting from her own London neighbourhood.