“The media are also to blame for this. For months, you supported them and gave them a platform. The media contributed to making this happen today. And now here you have a wounded police officer,” Minister Aleš Hojs said to the POP TV journalist Katarina Matejčič after the most violent protest so far.
At the Thursday’s violent protests, which included lots of dangerous pyrotechnics, granite cubes and other objects that the hooligans threw at the police officers, which also resulted in several people being injured – two of them had to be transported to the University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Minister of the Interior Aleš Hojs also came to check the situation on the ground.
When he walked past POP TV journalist Katarina Matejčič, and she asked him to explain what he was doing there, he replied with something she probably did not expect.
The media support for the protests ended in violence
Upset because of the havoc in the centre of Ljubljana and the wounded police officers, he told her that the media were also to blame for the violent protests, as they had been intensively supporting them ever since they began in the spring. “The media are also to blame for this. For months, you supported them and gave them a platform. The media contributed to making this happen today. And now here you have a wounded police officer,” Minister Hojs said. Matejčič wanted to justify her work by commenting on the purchasing of personal protective equipment during the first wave of the epidemic, but Hojs quickly replied: “What do the police officers have to do with the purchasing of protective equipment?” The POP TV journalist tried to add that the problem was, in fact, the government, but their talk ended there.
Let us remind you that the anti-government protests have been strongly supported by the media from the very beginning, even though they were also illegal from the very beginning. Together, the media and the protesters fuelled disobedience and disregard for the health measures, which ultimately resulted in high numbers of infected people and deaths during the second wave of the epidemic. This will also be followed by social and economic consequences that many people are not even aware of yet. And on Thursday, violence was also added to the list of consequences.
Sara Kovač