OPEN LETTER TO CROATIAN PUBLIC ON BEHALF OF THE EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE OF CROATIAN JOURNALISTS' ASSOCIATION RELATING TO
THE "VJESNIK" VIOLATION OF BASIC PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
The Shameful Use of Journalists
by Jagoda Vukusic
Novi list, Rijeka, Croatia, May 3, 1996
For the past few weeks someone has been undertaking
dangerous business, seriously distorting the truth, the
country s image, people s destiny and producing the alibi of
their past with journalistic feathers. By publishing the article
titled Ivan Zvonimir Cicak has been working for the UDBA
since 1966 , Vjesnik violated all professional criteria(the right
of the other side, and of the five questions every journalist
must ask, he failed to ask at least two - how and why) and
with some unnamed individuals, probably from the Croatian
secret service or their collaborators, became jointly responsible
for the destruction of the last morsel of intellect in Croatia.
They know that there are very few people who would ever
believe that Cicak was an UDBA agent at the tender age of 18
because it is widely known that he was imprisoned on account
of his professed dedication to Croatia which was not made
public when it should have; during the Croatian state s
formative years, simultaneously with the de-udbanization.
They are not interested in the truth. They sit in their secret
offices, in which they page though alleged Serbian secret
intelligence documents (that are of serious nature but dubious
none the less) and use Vjesnik and offer the Croatian public
unsubstantiated claims, at a time when Croatian moral values
are in question.
We will still side with these secret instigators of chaos
despite the fact that they have just shamefully misused the
journalists and abused and played with the public - once they
cease to be the puppets of these secret agents and present
themselves as a credible newspaper. We are fed up with both
their and our weeds. If they are not prepared to satisfy, then
at least they could do is stop insulting our intelligence and
leave all us other journalists alone.
We wish all those who stand behind their ruining the
reputation of the journalistic profession, the editor in chief of
Vjesnik, as well as the person below him who took part in this
collaboration , to the Zagreb financial police which closed the
offices and repossessed the computer discs with the previously
published texts of the weekly Panorama for hygienic and
ecological reasons (?) a very nice and successful May 3rd; the
international day in commemoration of the free press.
Translated by: CHC for Human Rights
