Is all media in Croatia held by the leading party HDZ (otherwise known as the Croatian Democratic Union)? No, that's not true: No media in Croatia is owned or in any way connected to the party. This claim originated after it was recently discovered that an adviser to the now-former Minister of Economy Davor Filipović, Jurica Lovrinčević, was having the media publish his assertions, as well as extracting money from the Ministry. The Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, dismissed both men after a leaked secretly recorded conversation of the adviser was published in Nacional newspapers on December 12, 2023.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) on December 15, 2023. It opened (translated from Croatian to English by Lead Stories staff):
HOW DOES THE MEDIA IN CROATIA WORK
- HDZ HOLDS THE MEDIA
- ALL PORTALS AND TELEVISION
- A.P. MEGATRAITOR
- HDZ - A CRIME ORGANIZATION
(A.P. are the initials of Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković)
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sun Dec 17 09:15:27 2023 UTC)
On December 12, 2023, the Croatian newspaper Nacional published a series of articles containing transcripts from audio footage (archived here and here) of adviser Lovrinčević pressuring the "Mreža TV" journalist Marin Vlahović to ask his director to reimburse him for funds he'd spent from his budget that he allocated to the media house. He listed all public agencies and state companies that are under his control, saying:
"So the Adriatic pipeline, the Nuclear Energy Fund, that's all under my control. Then this Environmental fund, Hrvatske vode. Apart from the ministry and Hamag, I control everything. From all these sources I can release (the money)."
To date, these agencies and companies have spent or will spend almost 1.7 million euros on media campaigns. According to Nacional, this illustrates how a person who is a special confidant of Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and a key confidant of Davor Filipović, trades in influence and tries to extort part of the state's money for himself.
This does not mean all Croatian media are held by the political party and its members. For example, the newspaper Nacional, which discovered the affair called "Mreža,"is an independent media house, owned by Beroslav Jelinić and Miro Ninčević. There are other media organizations that reported on this affair and openly criticized the leading party, which directly refutes the claim that HDZ keeps Croatian media under its influence. Other reports on this subject are here, here and here.
