A reporter for Jutarnji List daily was on Tuesday denied accreditation to attend a news conference at the Office of the President, with President Zoran Milanovic saying that Hanza Media, of which the daily is part, "is not a media company but a cartel", and his spokesman saying the reporter had not been invited to the event.

“(The media company) is financed by the government, they are shameless… It is not a media outlet, whoever works there is not a journalist for me,” Milanovic said when asked why the reporter for Jutarnji List was not allowed to attend the conference.

Milanovic’s spokesman Nikola Jelic explained that the reporter was not banned from the event but that he had not been invited.

Jutarnji List said its journalist Kresimir Zabec was denied accreditation to attend the news conference without any explanation.

Zabec said he was shocked, describing as dangerous the president’s claiming for himself the right to assess who for him is a journalist and who is not, noting that that “is decided by editors and not politicians”.

“This is the first time in my long career that something like this has happened,” he said.

“He disagrees with what we do, but this is not the way. The more so as he calls out the HDZ and other parties for lack of democracy and totalitarian conduct, and he acts the same way or even worse,” Zabec said.

The head of the Croatian Journalists Association (HND), Hrvoje Zovko, described the case as unacceptable.

“Everyone can be dissatisfied with the work of an individual journalist or media outlet, but there are other instruments to deal with that, such as before the (HND’s) Ethical Council,” Zovko said, noting that the Office of the President was not a private property and that it was a duty of every politician, including the president, to answer questions.

The president of the European Federation of Journalists and the Croatian Journalists Union, Maja Sever, said Milanovic’s move was unprecedented and unacceptable, and his statement about the Hanza Media company “an act of crossing the line.”

“In a democratic society nobody has the right to forbid reporters to work,” Sever said.