Over the same article, the leader of the organisation U ime obitelji filed as many as five lawsuits against Dežulović and the publisher of Novosti. She lost all of them, and in the last case they attempted to prevail by claiming that Dežulović is not a journalist.
Boris Dežulović, a columnist for the weekly Novosti, has been finally acquitted by the Zadar County Court in proceedings brought against him by Željka Markić. She filed criminal charges for insult over the article “Željka Markić, stupid or blonde?”, published in 2018, in which Dežulović satirically mocks her misunderstanding of satire.
In the judgment of the County Court, issued on 23 January 2026, the court upheld the assessment of the Zagreb Municipal Criminal Court from 2025 that Dežulović did not abuse his journalistic work and that the claim by the leader of the organisation U ime obitelji that the text was written with the intention of harming her honour and reputation was unfounded.
Reminding Markić that she is a public figure who must demonstrate a higher degree of tolerance toward provocative writing concerning her, the three-judge panel composed of judges Dijana Grancarić, Sandra Radanović and Ivan Marković assessed the content of Dežulović’s column as satire and a permissible form of expression within the criteria of freer writing and within the limits of acceptable criticism.
Read the full article here.