About 640 Croatian intellectuals at home and abroad on Monday made an appeal to the Croatian public warning about media manipulation ahead of the December 4 parliamentary election, and calling on citizens to be critical and cautious by voting for candidates who will run the country in a responsible and balanced manner.
The signatories to the appeal warn about the "media's perfidious game" ahead of the election, which constantly attacks only one political option and suggests whom to trust.
"The media have become a power above Croatian society. They aren't accountable to anyone, except to profit and invisible centres of political power. For that purpose, they are allowed to do anything, from various forms of manipulation to the undermining of the Croatian state," say the signatories - members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), university professors, scholars, diplomats, cultural workers, journalists and students.
They say the constant pre-election attacks on one political option, while humouring others, are aimed at suggesting whom to trust and who the national saviours are.
"In no European state today are the media so arranged as to blow more or less one horn. A man gets the impression that they are still in their red shirts with the Partisan cap on their heads," the appeal says, adding that "individual dissonant tones only confirm the argument about the uniformity of the media which are managed from one place, so even scandals spill over as under the law of communicating vessels."
In 20 years of Croatia's independence, the media have been in the function of promotion, mostly unfavourable to the Croatian state and leaning towards the left, the appeal says, adding that such media are more useful to hidden centres of power than democratic paths, as "they eliminate the opponent immediately, while simultaneously winning the public over to their positions, which don't need to be explained."
The appeal goes on to say that "over the past 20 years, the human rights ombudsman has not intervened once to protect individuals or social groups from media attacks, and an expert analysis of the media, made by a scientific institute, has never been published."
The appeal warns about "the collusion with the media by the state prosecutor, who selectively circulates cases, undermining democratic standards and transforming into a power one should bow to."
Newspapers in Croatia today are a strictly closed and controlled domain for the creation of a certain type of opinion, the intellectuals write, calling for the establishment of alternative media domains in which, instead of "creating conditions for (Communist) Party victories," one could talk about the new situation more strongly and more critically, advocating universal human values and national interests.
Among the signatories are HAZU members Josip Pecaric, Andrija Kastelan, Dubravko Jelcic and Ivan Aralica; the first Croatian parliament speaker, Zarko Domljan; a corresponding HAZU member and Heidelberg University professor emeritus Zvonimir Janko; Henrik Heger Jurican of the Sorbonne; retired university professor Adalbert Rebic; Croatian Victimology Society president Zvonimir Separovic; Assistant Zagreb Bishop Valentin Pozaic; professors Davor Pavuna, Miroslav Tudjman, and others.
