Journalist Union: Journalists Work While MPs Talk

Parliamentarians have shown their lack of knowledge and respect towards journalists, who are a link between parliament and the public.

The SNH (Croatian Journalists’ Union) evaluated the statements by the president of the Croatian parliament Luka Bebic to be totally unacceptable. Bebic said that journalists only work three minutes per day. The journalists were also against the vice-president of the Croatian parliament Vladimir Seks and the parliamentarian Damir Kajin for giving support to Bebic in his insults to the profession of journalism.

In a statement from the SNH, which was signed by union president Gabrijela Galic, they said that the Journalists’ union does not want to believe that the awkward outburst does not reflect the stance of the political elite towards the very responsible and hard journalist profession, and that it is maybe the result of not knowing the job of a journalist.

“Journalists work whilst parliamentarians talk. They work whilst they gather and check information, seek the facts, travel from place to place, talk with people, read materials, listen to recordings etc. Every journalist in 17 years of work, wrote a much larger pile of texts than the half metre high phonogram collection of Kajin – for a much lower salary than a parliamentarian’s – it says in the statement.

Are journalists a scapegoat?

“With all the due respect and recognition of the Croatian parliament, those outbursts by the mentioned parliamentarians show the inadequate knowledge of work and a lack of basic respect towards journalists, who through their work create a necessary link between the parliament and the public, who have the right to know. In every democratic country the work of a journalist includes the right to criticism based on facts – the SNH believes that the scorn and silencing of journalists from the parliamentary stands is not the best direction for a democracy, and that a better path can be drafted in the necessary changes to the media and employment laws that need to reduce the massive undeclared employment in the media, and wider.

The head of the union then asks in the statement: Will the parliamentarians in that sense send a few words of criticism to the owners of the media – or are the journalists always guilty of everything?