Rusty scissors of Nova TV

The show`s collocutor was a person of the lowest level of communication, who drinks hard alcohol during brakes to stop their hands shaking.

All of us who have lived a great part of our lives under rigid censorship of the spoken or written word are horrified of a return to such times. War on censorship is a battle for a democratic country. It is clear to see, each democracy opponent’s goal is to censor television as the most influential medium.

Censorship even on HTV (Croatian National Television)

The only type of television censorship I can forgive is during the Serbian aggression, because images discover many war secrets. After the war, they managed to abolish democracy on national television, which is understandable because it is run by personnel who was brought up on censorships in the period before the 90`s, and some of them started their careers at that time. Even the popular Hloverka Novak-Srzic confirmed this when she said the age of socialism still rules (the national television) HRT (she was probably thinking of communism as an even more dreadful type of evil).

I expected private TV stations to teach them a lesson in democracy, which they partially did. Unfortunately, my recent experience on Nova TV shows the opponents of democracy are hiding even under private capital. Or could it be the way or earning for them?

I was invited to the filming of the «U sridu» show. The host tricked me because he verbally announced to me my possible collocutor in the show, and then in the midst of hundreds of New Year text messages he squeezed in his own, in which he announced a different person, unknown to me, and I had read the text message only an hour before the filming.

The most powerful means – scissors

There was no time left to ask around who he was, it was only during the filming that I saw it was a case of an immature person of the lowest level of communication, who drinks hard liquor during the intermission to stop his hands from shaking.

I admit, the host tricked me using my own recklessness. When he invited me to the show over the phone he said it will be a light post-holiday atmosphere and then he directed a real hell. But he did not stop at that. He, or his employer, shortened the filmed material. They used the most powerful means of censorship, scissors!

Scissors were working in contrast to the Media Law, and in accordance with historic, but revived communist rules. The censorship conductor did not cut out a single collocutor’s insult from the filmed material, not even towards the guest editor of the show, and there were loads of them: insults at the lowest level, without any arguments! The censor cut out my replies with messages which obviously did not appeal to the host or his employers. Why did they invite me to the show then?

It will be interesting for the reader what the scissors threw away into the dust bin. Here are a few examples: During the topic of the death penalty for criminals I said it was an injustice that Hussein was sentenced only for the murder of 148 civilian Iraqi Shiites, and was not tried for numerous other killings, of 6,000 Kurds, for example.

With opposing the death penalty, I spoke of an unjustly different approach to trying criminals. As an injustice example I stated data that hardly anyone was convicted for the killing of 7,183 Croatian civilians during the Homeland War.  

Criminals have also not been punished for the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Croatia after the end of World War II. No-one has been punished for Goli otok and other communist casemates in which thousands of human lives were destroyed. As a result, justice is often deceiving. Unfortunately, viewers are being deceived even by those who cut that part of my speech with sharp, but also recognisably rusty scissors.

Journalists without education

The scissors also worked on my reply to the guest editor, who insulted parliamentary representatives. He called them uneducated, stupid, some of them idiots even. The author’s vocabulary speaks for itself, but I defended the representatives because tens of thousands of voters stand behind them.

I replied by saying the representatives are not chosen according to their professional qualification, but their political views, and the guest editor, as a journalist, should be aware of the tragic fact that no less than 60 percent  of Croatian journalist have a university degree, and they directly shape the public opinion and educate the public!

Why have the enemies of the free word left the insult of parliamentary representatives, and cut out the data referring to the profession which stated the insult? Should a journalist have a university degree, I do not know, but the fact is journalism is studied at university.

I have not heard of a secondary school for journalists, maybe it will be founded. As it may be, being a journalist today (or editor) of that TV station does not mean to be qualified, but to use scissors well. I am opposed to artistic freedom when it comes to truncating someone’s words! I support the freedom of speech; let everything a public person says be heard because it forms an image of the person. And censors` scissors create an image of immature democracy at all levels in Croatia, which deserves a real democracy because it has spilled too much blood over it.

Yours. Andrija Hebrang D. Sc. Prof