Leading the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) to launch an online fact-finding mission for entities related to media.
Media freedom in Slovenia continued to decline in 2021 under pressure from the government of Prime Minister Janez Janša. The country saw the seventh highest number of alerts on the MapMF platform with 29 alerts and 41 attacked persons or entities related to media, leading the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) to launch an online fact-finding mission in May to assess the situation. Increasing pressure on independent journalism during this time centred on the financial suffocation of the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) and increasing political in‐ terference at the public broadcaster. Con‐ cerningly, many of these violations were recorded while Slovenia held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. At the beginning of the year, UKOM, the Government Communications Directorate, suspended the financing of the STA for the second time in three months, in what media rights groups called an attempt to destabilise the agency through financial blackmail. The PM and leading...