Babe!
Selska 112 a
10000 Zagreb
babe@babe.hr
Zagreb, August 15, 2011.
Reaction to the reaction of Anton Filić, president of the Executive Board of SNH
I will be brief. At the outset, I would like to immediately acknowledge that the members of BaBa and I personally know journalist Nataša Škaričić very well, but I would like to emphasize that we are not reacting out of friendly relations, but rather out of disgust at the content and style of the letter from the newly elected president of the Executive Board of the Union of Journalists (and I guess journalists) of Croatia.
First of all – someone who represents a union should be concerned with the rights of the workers in whose name they exist, not with protecting their own name and reputation. I don't know what message Nataša Škaričić sent, and I don't care. A person who did her job with the utmost professionalism and was also brave like few of her colleagues certainly has no reason to be sweet and modest, let alone diligent, when addressing an organization that claims to defend the rights of her profession, after several years of not receiving a salary.
It's not clear to me what the difference is whether someone pays the membership fee or not when it comes to a historic decision, a court precedent that paves the way for the protection of a large number of journalists with her status. Until now, they were completely unprotected.
When several hundred employees from HTV were laid off, we didn't ask them if they were our members. We weren't even interested in whether they supported our work at all. We reacted to a serious violation of the labor rights of many who didn't deserve it. The illegality of the previous contracts is a separate story. And then we came to SNH and wanted to do something together. Nothing happened. But that's not so important now.
What should be clear to little Perica is that 2011 is absolutely unacceptable. for the president of anything to write: "And if this is just a new phenomenon of the influence of a female journalist's femininity on the quality of her oversensitive colleague's work - as one confusingly romanticized passage of the text suggests - we doubt that media theorists will welcome this superiority of charm over facts". Introducing someone's femininity and charm into a story about the grossest violation of a journalist's rights, which was confirmed by the final court decision, requires an immediate resignation and a public apology from both the journalist whose article is being reacted to and the journalist Nataša Škaričić.
And one recommendation to Mr. Filić – a little less ego trip, a little more advocacy for the rights of one of the most humiliated professions today. And privately - don't put the saliva that drips from you on other people's cheeks.
Sanja Sarnavka
