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Media Landscape - Croatia

INTRODUCTION

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Croatia is a presidential, multi-party parliamentary democracy located in south-eastern Europe. The country’s population is 4.4 million with an annual GDP of approximately €6,900 per capita.

The major language is Croatian and major religion Christianity. Nearly one third of citizens live in the greater area of the capital Zagreb. The country area of 56,594 square kilometres swings in a horseshoe shape from a thousand islands and the east coast of the Adriatic Sea across hilly central Croatia to the continental Pannonian Plains in the East. Once a state within Yugoslavia, Croatia held its first multi-party elections since World War II in 1990. A 1991-1995 war broke out after it declared independence. The war ruined the economy, notably tourism, and left one-third of the territory’s property destructed and over ten thousand casualties. In the post-war era, the country was under a rather autocratic regime, which ended by opposition victory in 2000 elections. The new government introduced democratic changes that also brought about the freedom of the media.

Croatia is now hoping to become a member of the European Union by 2010. In terms of the EU, the population is about 1.2% and economy about 0.26% of GDP. The EU accounts for more than half of both exports and imports, with Italy, Germany and Austria being the most prominent partners.


1. WRITTEN PRESS

There are no official figures in Croatia that would accurately describe the media landscape. There is a steady decline in production of newspapers. Newspapers are becoming more tabloid-like and are sold mainly at newsstands. The four largest daily newspapers, Jutarnji List, Večernji List, 24 Sata and Slobodna Dalmacija, struggle for readership – and advertising – with sensational news stories and photos, and promotion prizes. The pressure to be more ’commercial’ discourages good investigative reporting.

The magazine market is led by feminine magazines and the top ten weeklies include six women’s magazines. Three foreign publishers entered a joint venture Adria Magazines in May 2006. With 17 titles, Adria Magazines expects to gain a 25-30 percent share in the growing magazines market.


2. AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA

Among some 150 radio-stations and 15 TV channels that broadcast in Croatia, only six radio stations and four TV channels are licensed for national coverage. Television is a predominant source of information. The state-owned television is the leader by audience on the national level. The largest and the most influential Croatian television belongs to the chain of the state-owned HRT (Hrvatska Radio-Televizija or Croatian Radio-Television). The television operates two channels: HTV1 and HTV2.

Founded in 2000 by Central European Media Enterprises (or CME), Nova TV was the first commercial television with national coverage, while German TV channel RTL launched its Croatian outlet in April 2004. Besides these four national TV channels, another 13 private channels broadcast on regional level. They are constantly faced with financial problems. As many as five state-owned radio stations are among the top ten stations ranked by audience. However, they cannot take the lead from the.two private music-only stations. The penetration of cable and digital television is low comparing to analogical receivers. National Telecom Agency plans to increase digital television coverage to 90 percent in 2007.


3. NEWS AGENCIES

The most prominent among the three Croatian news agencies is the public news agency HINA. The other two news agencies are IKA and STINA. Owned by Croatian Episcopal Conference, IKA - or Informative Catholic Agency - is the primary source for journalists covering the Catholic Church. STINA is a regional private agency, specialised in diversity and minority reporting. Several international radio stations provide news feed in local language.


4. ONLINE MEDIA

The broadband access rate is much below the EU’s average. The rate of Internet use was around 35 percent in 2005. Nearly all major newspapers had a web site in 2005 and immediately entered the top 20 Croatian sites. Except for the Novi list, all other newspaper sites are free-of-charge. The leading web-sites in early 2006 were the sites of two major internet providers, T-portal by HT and net.hr by Iskon, providing entertainment, job ads, health issues and lifestyle stories.


5. MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

Nearly all journalists are members of Croatian Journalists Association (CJA). Hrvatska udruga radija i novina or HURIN (Croatian Association of Radio Stations and Newspapers) is an organisation of 156 mainly smaller electronic media and newspapers. Sixteen largest publishers are members of Udruga novinskih izdavača (Association of Newspaper Publishers, ANP), which operates as part of Croatian Employers’ Association. These two organisations of publishers cover about 80 percent of all media employees.


6. MEDIA POLICIES

The Croatian Constitution guarantees the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press. It bans censorship and journalists are entitled to report and to access information. The Constitution also guarantees the right for correction if legal rights are violated by published news. Croatian media are governed by the Law on Media, the Law on Electronic Media, the Law on Croatian Radio-Television and the Law on the Right to Access Information. In the past several years, they have been harmonised with European standards and underwent the EU screening in July 2006, as part of membership negotiations.

The Law on Electronic Media and the Law on Media have transposed a number of provisions from the EU's Television without Frontiers Directive. The Law on Media establishes an upper ceiling for capital ownership in general information dailies or weeklies at 40 percent of the total market sales. The Law on Electronic Media allows cross-media ownership of national electronic media if the ownership at any other regional, county and city level does not exceed 25 percent.


7. ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS

The Code of Ethics of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, limited to moral condemnation, is the only institute that oversees mistakes of journalists. According to laws, autonomy of reporters should be covered by bylaws of individual media; however, only one newspaper (Jutrnji list) adopted such rules


8. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE TRENDS

Being an EU candidate country, Croatia is expected to amend its media laws in order to meet more transparency and effectiveness, to remove political influence from the media and to liberalise the telecommunications market. Attention has been steadily focused on independence of the public television HRT and the public news agency HINA. Both appear to encounter problems in implementing standards of professional journalism while protecting themselves from possible political influence. The national television is expected to face open market issues once Croatia enters the EU. International experts encourage a revision of professional and ethical evaluation system of the national broadcaster.

In a successful move to secure the leading position on the national TV scene, public television HRT selected new television leadership among politically unaffiliated professionals in early 2004. Unprecedented, the top two positions went to two women, and the changes they have been introducing have not been just cosmetic. They sharpened the edge of news reporting, gave more space to professionally anchored political talk shows, and introduced new shows that address public interest. New strategy also includes local production of largely viewed soaps, regular daily political talk shows on controversial topics, richly produced musical shows.

The national Agency for Telecommunications plans to reach 90 percent coverage of digital terrestrial television signal in 2007. In experimental broadcasting, it reached 65 percent coverage in 2006. National strategy for broadband internet access plans to increase access penetration by 9 percentage points by 2008, to the current European level of 12 percent.


9. REFERENCES

Despite legal provisions about the public right to information on publishers, polls are the only source of information on media readership and audience. The leading research agencies that regularly survey the media-related samples are GfK, Media Metar, Mediana Fides and Puls. The latter’s daughter company AGB Nielsen is the only researcher into television audiences. Puls and AGB Nielsen also provide data on media advertising.

Online references:

  • Hrvatsko novinarsko društvo (Croatian Journalists' Association) http://www.hnd.hr. Directory of Croatian media regularly updated.
  • Državni zavod za statistiku (National Agency of Statistics) http://www.dzs.hr. Croatian national agency in charge of official statistics.
  • AGB Nielsen Media Research
  • MediaPULS research
  • AGB Nielsen television audience measurement
  • GfK research, March 2006
  • AGB Nielsen Media Research
  • Source: Overview of Telecom Indicators 2002-2005, Croatian Telecommunications Agency
  • EU's Croatia 2006 Progress Report


10. MEDIA RESOURCES

Newspapers

Audio/Visual Media

Television

Radio

Media Institutions

Blogs/Civil Media

Excerpt from EUROPEAN MEDIA GOVERNANCE: THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSIONS, published by Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.com).

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