The Electronic Media Council on Monday decided to temporarily suspend broadcasting licences to local television stations which aired an episode of the political talk-show Bujica on November 5, having determined that hate speech was used in the programme.
The broadcasting licences were suspended for a period of 24 hours for Z1 TV, SBTV, and Osjecka TV, which are to stop airing on Monday, December 3, at 00:00, and resume at 23:59.
Srce TV, Adriatic TV, and TV Jadran lost their broadcasting rights for a period of four hours, also on December 3, starting at 18:59, with the programme set to resume at 22:59.
The stations violated the article in the Electronic Media Act which defines hate speech, the Council said.
The November 5 episode of Bujica dealt with the political, security, and other aspects of the migrant crisis in Croatia and the world. In the programme, statements were aired in which people called for violence against migrants, while one of the guests in the studio made claims about migrants as a group which carries and spreads infectious diseases (AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis), the council said.
The programme’s host, Velimir Bujanec, called the guest’s statement “a little radical”, which cannot be seen as an adequate warning that such speech is inappropriate and not allowed, they added.
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Comments about migrants made by Bujanec himself were looked into as well, with the conclusion that they encouraged hateful, discriminatory, and derogatory discourse, the council said.
Bujanec has been editor and host of the right-wing talk show Bujica, syndicated by a number of local TV stations, since 2010.
Broadcasting licences were suspended for 24 hours for those stations which had also aired a rerun of the programme in its original form, while the ones which only aired the live show lost their broadcasting rights for four hours only.
We will continue with zero-tolerance policy towards hate speech, because freedom of speech is not an absolute value in itself, but is protected by law. Croatia’s Constitution says that “freedoms and rights can be guaranteed only to protect the freedom and rights of others,” the council said.
Earlier in November, 18 Croatian humanities and social sciences scholars penned an open letter sent to the media, warning about the increasingly negative and “criminalised” depictions of migrants and migrations in general in the Croatian public discourse, and calling on the media to report on this global issue in a trustworthy and responsible manner.
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