Association of Journalists and Commentators

Ljubljana – A group of several thousand protesters again gathered in Ljubljana on Wednesday to protest against the Covid pass mandate in what was the third such protest. Starting in Republic Square, the rally moved to the ring road, which was closed for a while, as the police tried to break up the crowd, including by using a water canon.

Ljubljana – The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), an initiative funded by the European Commission that monitors violations of press and media freedom, will be on a virtual mission to Slovenia over the next two weeks to examine alleged deterioration in media freedom in the country. The findings are to be released in July.

Ljubljana – World Press Freedom Day, celebrated on Monday, was dedicated to the situation at the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) as a fundraising campaign in support of the STA officially kicked off.

The campaign comes after the government suspended financing of the agency. It has been organised by the Association of Slovenian Journalists and the Trade Union of Journalists.

Brussels – Slovenian representatives presented differing views on the media situation as they attended Friday’s public debate at the European Parliament in Brussels. The head of the Parliament’s democracy monitoring group, Sophie in ‘t Veld, wanted to know what criteria are used as basis for journalist in Slovenia to be classified as “left”.

Ljubljana – A survey of ten major news portals in Slovenia in 2020 has shown that the majority of news, except on the portal Nova24TV.si, is unbiased. Among articles that were flagged as biased, those that were critical of the government far outnumbered pro-government reporting.