Croatian Film Directors’ Guild said on Thursday they are ending their cooperation with the state broadcaster HRT, joining some 30 NGOs who have announced they would boycott the HRT until the March 2 journalists’ protest against attacks on freedom of the press.
The Directors’ Guild said they would not give any statements to the HRT during the International Conference on Women in Film Industry, which will take place on February 21-22.
The state broadcaster was doing “irreparable damage to the audiovisual culture and the Croatian culture as a whole, by systemically denigrating the status of film directors, dodging copyright laws, disrespecting independent production quotas, and failing to produce content for children,” they said.
Earlier this week, the NGOs, including, among others, the Croatian Journalists’ Association (HND), election monitoring NGO Gong, the Human Rights House, and the Centre for Peace Studies, said in a press release they were boycotting the HRT because wanted to show public support to the journalists and media outlets sued by the state broadcaster.
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So far, the HRT has filed some 36 lawsuits against other media outlets and a number of journalists, some of whom work for the broadcaster. The total amount of damages the HRT is seeking is nearly 2.3 million kuna (€310,000).
The HND will organise a protest walk on Saturday, March 2, to warn about the importance of free press in a free society.
The attacks on freedom of press and free speech are visible in numerous lawsuits, political pressure, threats, advertisers’ demands, but also the faulty legal framework and the lack of a clear media policy, the HND said.
“Our aim is to draw attention to the perverse situation in which the public broadcaster is suing media outlets and journalists for reporting on the way taxpayers’ money is spent, and using intimidation and pressure to try and further weaken the state of media freedoms in Croatia”, the NGOs wrote in a letter signed by the Gong executive director, Jelena Berkovic.
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