Centre for Civic Education (CCE) rejects as false, selective, and tendentious the claims published about the conference Who Has Power over RTCG and to Whom Should It Belong? on the RTCG portal and in the RTCG Dnevnik 2. These claims represent an attempt to divert attention from the substance of the discussion to side issues and technical details.
The assertion that “RTCG was discussed without RTCG” is untrue. RTCG was represented on the conference panel through two members of the RTCG Council, which, according to the Law on the National Public Broadcaster RTCG, is the main governing body in RTCG, as well as through one employee, while several other employees attended the event. Yet, in RTCG’s report, even their own Council members ware not treated as relevant interlocutors. This is difficult to separate from the fact that the law within RTCG has long been applied selectively, especially regarding the repeated unlawful appointments of the Director General.
RTCG’s report ignored the essence of both panels. The first panel addressed the broader European and regional context of public broadcasters, but this part of the discussion was omitted entirely. The second panel encompassed several participants from RTCG, including two speakers who are hierarchically above the Director General, but their views were also excluded from RTCG’s Dnevnik 2.
Instead of reporting on the content, arguments and messages from both panels, and the introductory session, RTCG reduced its coverage exclusively to the incorrect claim that the RTCG management “had not been invited”, and an error in presenting the guest from Slovenia.
The CCE apologises for the mistake in presenting Vanja Vardjan from RTV Slovenia. This was a technical oversight unrelated to the substance of the conference or its key messages. After the broadcast of the feature and article, Vardjan contacted CCE in writing to clarify that the error had, in fact, been his own.
It is tendentious and unacceptable to use a single incorrect caption to delegitimize the entire event, its panelists, participants, conclusions and topics. It is particularly problematic that statements from the region were selectively used as counter-arguments, which were not spoken at all in the context of RTCG, but as examples, positive and negative, of how public broadcasters function elsewhere. Regional speakers addressed only their own systems, which was the concept of that part of the conference – a comparative approach and exchange of experiences. At no point did the CCE attribute or suggest to the regional interlocutors views about RTCG, nor was their participation used for evaluating RTCG’s work.
Despite this, part of the RTCG management, which declaratively calls for dialogue and constructive criticism, decided not to broadcast a single statement from the conference and to completely omit the reasons why RTCG journalists and employees spoke about pressures, degradations and professional problems within the outlet. Instead, they contacted colleagues from RTVBH and RTVSLO, with misleading information about the essence of the event, and then, instead of statements by the event participants, used their statements for the report, which is contrary to all professional standards.
It is important to point out that, during the organisation of this conference, the CCE invited six of the nine members of the RTCG Council, including the President of the Council, as well as the Director of TVCG and the Director of the RTCG portal, and two of the six invited Council members were panelists. Had the invited representatives of the management attended, they would have had the opportunity to present their positions and participate in the dialogue, which also entails facing criticism in the public interest.
The CCE did not invite, nor will it invite to its events, the repeatedly unlawfully appointed Director General of RTCG, as confirmed by final court decisions.
Attempts to discredit the CCE by invoking a “wider context” involving completely unrelated topics and insinuations reveals a lack of arguments and a clear intention to divert attention from what actually matters: the conference also addressed the legality of RTCG’s governance, the protection of the public interest, professional standards, and citizens’ right to an objective and independent public broadcaster -information that RTCG viewers were denied.
With such reporting, RTCG has, unfortunately, confirmed precisely the problems that were pointed out during the event. We believe that this will be reflected in the findings of the RTCG Ombudsman.
Zvezdana Kovač, Strategy and Outreach Director