Today is your lucky day: a NYT journalist on a European road trip

Datum:

Patrick Kingsley, a journalist of the New York Times, has come to the headquarters of Nova24TV these past days and wanted to get statements from some of the editors of the above-mentioned media house. Prior to his arrival, he was sending e-mails and sought to get in contact by phone, all the while not forgetting to mention that he was a journalist of the world’s biggest newspaper (here are some excerpts from his e-mails: “This is Patrick Kingsley, a staff reporter at the New York Times, the world’s biggest newspaper”; while in some of his other e-mails, he used almost the same sentence, albeit slightly altered: “I am Patrick Kingsley, a staff correspondent at the New York Times, the world’s biggest newspaper”.)

At the end of the e-mails he sent to our editors, he added that they should consider themselves extremely fortunate by being offered the opportunity of being featured in the world’s biggest newspaper (we publish further excerpts from his e-mails: “Could you make this happen? It’s a great chance to be featured in the world’s biggest newspaper”.).

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the biggest of them all?
A serious journalist of such a renowned newspaper should never even contemplate of putting down similar words. Firstly, because the addressees are already in the know of the importance of the NYT and that the e-mails of mr. Kingsley show not only his underestimation of the addressees in some subalpine country, but also his own haughtiness. And secondly, because The New York Times is not the world’s biggest newspaper after all. As far as the printed edition is concerned, the NYT is preceded by two Japanese newspapers, namely by The Yomouri Shimbun and The Asai Shimbun, while in the United States of America, the USA Today could bear a grudge against mr. Kingsley, as their printed edition is twice as big as that of the NYT. Except if mr. Kingsley’s information differ from those of the WAN-IFRA organisation. Even a discussion about a potential influence exerted by the NYT could be a very lively one between the journalists and the media experts.

Foto: iStock

Mr. Kingsley did not hide his intentions that his primary task was the investigation of the Slovenian media horizon. We cannot quite escape the feeling that his interest rests only in one part of the aforesaid media horizon, namely in those media that form part of the conservative political specturm. He was most evidently interested in Nova24TV and Nova obzorja that publishes political magazine Demokracija and a more lightly weekly journal Škandal. Unlike the established media, created during the communist period as public property, that have changed hands and become the property of the media tycoons for peanuts, Demokracija magazine and Nova obzorja are present on the media market for only two decades, while the television and the web portal Nova24TV were brought into existence only two years ago. Nova24TV was created with the investment payment of a couple of hundreds of small shareholders. Later on, the capital of the Hungarian media house joined the ownership of Nova24TV and »the world’s biggest newspaper« investigates now into a modest medium which lags way behind any post-communist media if the finance and the influence exerted are taken into consideration, to say nothing of any other global media houses. The NYT is not interested in the proprietary relations of Pro plus that will soon change hands and that together with the Pop TV and the Kanal A controls considerable part of Slovenian media and advertising space. Finance, Slovenian financial newspaper, is owned by the Swedish Bonnier AB Group for quite some time, and yet the NYT does not care much about that fact.

The recycling of the leftist bulletins
My assumption is that mr. Kingsley will form his investigation on the recyclable material coming from Mladina, Dnevnik, Večer and also some other left-wing media. This has become quite the regular practice of other media as well, especially by the Italian journal Il Piccollo. I presume that the text of mr. Kingsley’s report will be followed by a statement or an interview with Sandra Bašić Hrvatin and some Slovenian politician who will talk about the SDS political party as an extreme rightist party, about the danger that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban represents and about the Hungarian investment in Slovenia. And that news story from the NYT will be summarised by other Slovenian media who will then cover what the renowned and »the biggest newspaper in the world« reports on Slovenia. But the question arises whether the editorship and the owners of the NYT are at all aware of being thrust into the Slovenian pre-election campaign. This should be their main interest if they really care about their reputaion.

Fotografija osebe Patrick Kingsley.
Patrick Kingsley.

The medium of which I myself am the shareholder by owning five shares, does not hide its agenda. We position ourselves as a centre-right medium with a distinctly critical attitude towards the communism and the degenerated leftist political parties that are currently in power in Slovenia. The so-called dominant media also do not hide their financial structure and their programme: the media of Hakl, of Petrič and of Petan are distinctively inclined towards the kleptomaniac elite and the communist continuity of which they also form part. On the other hand, they are extremely hostile towards the SDS and its leader Janez Janša.

Even the devil himself has apparently become restless before the general election, so he called the NYT to help. What is most interesting at it, is that the NYT did not even show the least interest in the Iranian money laundering operation in the NLB bank, from where a part of the funds made thus legal, was used to finance the terrorist activities and the construction of the nuclear capabilities of Iranian Army and was diverted to the United States of America. No, what the NYT was interested in, was this web portal you are currently reading, the televison you are watching, the Demokracija political magazine…

Otherwise, let us wait up what a brand new day hides for the NYT. We may even be able to say then that the NYT is “the world’s smallest newspaper”.

Miro Petek

Sorodno

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