Leaders of the European Association of News Agencies (EANA) have sent a letter to Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, criticising him for suspending the financing of the Slovenian News Agency (STA) and exerting pressure on its leadership.

“One can get clear evidence about the quality of media freedom and media policy in a country by watching the relation between state and the news agency and how the authorities confirm its independence,” EANA President and German news agency dpa CEO Peter Kropsch and EANA Secretary-General Alexandru Ion Giboi said in the letter.

If the independence of a news agency comes under siege, two strategies are spotted – putting pressure on the management or the supervisory board and/or
cutting the funding of the agency, they added.

“We are extremely worried that, for the time being, both strategies are being applied in Slovenia. Looking at the brutality of the applied actions, we regard STA’s situation as unprecedented,” the two EANA officials said, noting that “the limits of civilised public conversation have been crossed.”

By delivering fact-based, verified and independent news, a news agency belongs to the infrastructure of a country. Its services contribute strongly to democratic systems that are used to making decisions based on facts, EANA said.

“STA is an important part of Slovenia’s free media infrastructure,” EANA concluded in the letter, calling on Jansa to refrain from exerting influence on the agency’s autonomy.

The STA leadership has been at odds with the Jansa government for several months regarding the allocation of budgetary funds to which the agency is entitled as a public media service.

The government has been refusing to sign a new agreement on the financing of the agency in 2021. The state funding for STA was not disputable for any of the country’s previous governments in the past 30 years.

Even though the government is saying that its withholding the state funding for STA is due to the agency leadership’s refusal to submit some business documents, journalists’ associations in Slovenia believe this is an act of political pressure aimed at replacing the agency’s leadership and changing its reporting with which the Jansa government is not satisfied.