The Program Council of HRT (Croatian Radiotelevision) on Friday, while discussing a letter from Gong requesting fair and impartial coverage of presidential candidates, adopted a conclusion directing the program leadership of HRT to “take responsibility for the implementation of programs at lower programming levels.”
“The Council notes that the problem exists. Therefore, the Council directs the program leadership of HRT to monitor electoral program activities, particularly to understand their responsibility for implementing programs at lower programming levels through editorial offices,” reads the conclusion proposed by the chair of the Program Council, Vlaho Bogišić.
The Program Council reacted to letters from Gong and Maja Sever, president of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), which called for the improvement of programming rules for covering presidential elections, specifically the obligation of public television to report evenly and professionally about candidates in electoral races.
Gong urged HRT to provide fair and impartial coverage of electoral content to fulfill its role as a public media service. Gong also pointed out that in HRT’s reporting on HDZ’s presidential candidate, Dragan Primorac, it is evident that HRT promotes him in the central news program, giving him preference over other candidates.
They added that in the foreign affairs segment of Dnevnik 2, early in September, a news item was published about Primorac’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and at the end of August, in a segment about underwater cleaning, the HDZ presidential candidate was identified as a member of a diving club.
“These are all promotional activities for the mentioned candidate, who was not similarly identified, nor are similar activities of other candidates followed. Such reporting by HRT undermines the principle of equality among political parties and candidates, as well as the principle of impartiality, which the law mandates,” Gong emphasized.
In accordance with the legal obligation to respect the equality of political parties and independent candidates, as well as impartiality, correctness, and non-alignment with political parties or candidates, Gong called on HRT to enhance its programming rules. They demand that HRT establish programming rules for election coverage from the day a party publicly announces its candidate or an independent candidate announces their candidacy, or at the latest six months before the month in which the elections are held, rather than after the election announcement.
They believe that this would ensure equal application of the rules for all candidates and emphasize that before the official start of the campaign, there is an active unofficial pre-campaign period that currently does not fall under any rules or regulations, undermining candidate equality and the impartial informing of the public.
For more details, you can read on hina.hr.