Natalija Gorščak: Personnel and program pressures are hidden behind the dismissal proposal
According to the director of TV Slovenia, the main reason for the dismissal proposal is Natalija Gorščak because it does not follow the requirements of the Director-General Andreja Graha Whatmougha after personnel and program changes.
These are requests for change, which are no longer implemented in accordance with the statute of Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV SLO), he wrote in response to his proposal. This will be discussed by the program council of the public institution at an extraordinary session on Monday.
“Today, one of the foundations of modern, independent public television is that directors and editors of individual areas are independent and in their decisions, committed solely to the professional standards of journalistic stroke,” she pointed out.
Pea Whatmough’s basic ignorance of the limits of his powers as CEO, according to her observation, was most clearly demonstrated by concluding support for his proposal for dismissal Manice Janežič Ambrožič from the position of editor-in-chief of the news program of Television Slovenia. This, she said, was the direct cause of his proposal for consent to her dismissal.
As an agreement, he did not submit the proposal because of its poor work, but on the contrary – because of its insistence on high professional standards of work, respect for the statute of RTV Slovenia and advocacy for TV Slovenia to operate as a public television.
To the accusation of not taking action at the supposedly historically lowest viewership of TV programs, she replied that they are about the same in the trend every year. According to her, the damage is mainly due to cumulative annual data and not data from individual monitoring bands of the program.
Between 8pm and 10pm, however, viewership was lower last year because there were no entertainment shows in January and February and in May and June. Due to the epidemic of covida-19 and the 30th anniversary of independent Slovenia, there was also a lot of content that is not interesting for most viewers, she said. If there were as many entertainment shows in this band last year as the year before, the ratings would be comparable, she is convinced.
The complaint regarding the violation of the rules on jurisdiction on RTV Slovenia in connection with the statute of RTV Slovenia in 2019 was concluded with allegations, so that the programs were strictly substantiated and demonstrated, and were spent within the departmental budget for TV Slovenia. All surpluses were aligned with Whatmoug’s predecessor Igor Kadunc. The supervisory board of the public institution, chaired by the current general director, adopted the annual report of RTV Slovenia in February last year, she recalled. According to her, even the audit did not reveal anything controversial in the report.
On the accusation that she abandoned the due diligence in checking the conditions for business cooperation with the public institution, she reminded of the legal opinion from 2017 in the findings of the anti-corruption commissions. According to them, in the business cooperation of the company Sport Media Focus, partly owned by the husband of Manica Janežič Ambrožič, with the public institution, there is no basis for a new sum on the determination of the conflict of interests.
Peas Whatmough submitted a proposal for the consent of the RTV Slovenia program council to the dismissal of Natalija Gorščak on July 30, and the program council will discuss it on Monday, August 16, in the afternoon. President of the Council Ciril Baškovič decided on that date after submitting a legal opinion, that the decision of the council, which must be given within 15 days, will be taken in due time.
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