Journalists are ‘bloodthirsty bastards’ and need reining in, Slovakia’s Fico says

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico called journalists from major media outlets “bloodthirsty bastards” and threatened them with new restricting measures, including a national media watchdog, which critics say amounts to government censorship.

Fico went ballistic at a press conference Tuesday after one of the journalists present asked him about tensions in his governing coalition. (Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, from coalition partner Hlas, had criticized the government over the weekend.)

“Since the first day of the parliamentary results, you wouldn’t leave us [alone] for one minute. You went like bloodthirsty bastards against us,” said Fico. He singled out major independent Slovak media outlets Denník N, Denník Sme and Aktuality.sk, which have been critical of his government and with whom he has ceased all communication.

“Do you read your articles after yourself? I don’t think you do … It’s pure hate. You’re possessed with the devil,” continued Fico, and blamed journalists for the May attack in which a gunman shot him in the stomach.

“You only want harm, harm, and harm, that’s why the atmosphere [in the society] is like that,” said Fico.

He then went on to list the various measures the government could take against the media, which, according to him, “do whatever they want … with no responsibility” in the country.

“The time has come where we will have to take action,” said Fico, adding that there’s a “media mess” in Slovakia that “doesn’t exist in any other EU country.”

He said he supports the idea of establishing a national media authority and sanctions for journalists who fail to correct erroneous articles, adding that all journalists should go through requalification courses.

Opposition politicians reacted with outrage.

“The idea of ​​a national media authority that would control journalists is nothing more than a thinly veiled effort to censor and limit the media, which exists perhaps only in North Korea,” said MP Zora Jaurová from the opposition party Progressive Slovakia.

“It is far over the line for the Prime Minister to refer to journalists as ‘bloodthirsty bastards’, at a time when society is divided by the hatred that he and his cronies have been spreading for the last few years,” said chairman of the Za ľudí (For the People), Veronika Remišová, in a post on Facebook.

Slovak media has been under pressure since Fico came to power for the fourth time in the fall last year. His current government has scrapped the public broadcaster RTVS and replaced it with Slovak Television and Radio (STaR), which free-speech advocates and the EU institutions fear could be simply a mouthpiece for the ruling coalition.

In 2018, during Fico’s third term as PM, investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were murdered, sparking the largest protests in the country since the 1989 fall of the communist regime and leading to Fico’s resignation.