In a Media Environment Warped by Political Pressure, Oštro Pushes Back

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Established in 2018, Oštro is a centre for investigative journalism in Slovenia that covers stories of public interest in the Adriatic region – Slovenia, Croatia and Italy – and beyond. The non-profit was created in response to the steady decline of quality journalism, which has caused public trust in media outlets to plummet. Operating with the aim of being a model of journalistic excellence, Oštro is committed to strengthening regional journalistic standards and training future generations of local reporters.

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The hostile climate for independent reporting in Slovenia has thawed slightly since the ousting of former prime minister Janez Janša in 2022, leading to the nation moving up four spots on the press freedom ranking. Yet the country’s journalists continue to face immense political and commercial pressures that threaten to undermine the young democracy’s media ecosystem. In addition to grappling with financial difficulties and plummeting public trust in recent years, newsrooms have been hit with a barrage of defamation lawsuits and journalists have been subjected to online harassment and smear campaigns. According to the press freedom index, Slovenia’s current ranking is still 14 spots lower than before Janša’s government.

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In an interview that has been edited and condensed for clarity, we spoke to Anuška Delić, Oštro’s founder and editor-in-chief, about the organisation’s place in the media landscape and her vision for the future.

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Following a successful career as an investigative reporter working for TV Slovenia and the national daily newspaper Delo, what pushed you to launch Oštro in 2018?

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Delić: I knew from the start that Oštro would focus on investigative and data journalism, freedom of information, and fighting misinformation in Slovenia and the Adriatic region. It was clear that it would also focus on Croatia, which was fast becoming a placeholder for opaque foreign investments.

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The focus for Oštro was not chosen randomly. I started my first investigation in 2006 as a journalist at Delo into the spread of asbestos on public trains and on the railway infrastructure. That year, I began sending my first freedom of information requests, and was sucked into data journalism too. Later on, I started noticing that my paper and other media would benefit from working with fact-checkers, which I came into contact with through my collaboration with OCCRP, a global investigative reporting platform.

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What do you see as the biggest challenges for press freedom at present?

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Delić: Media freedom in Slovenia often depends on who is in government. Janša’s last government attacked all the non-right-wing media. The public media was also directly attacked because the government could do so. But the quality of journalism has been in decline for years, even before Janša’s last government took power. What happens in small countries like mine is that these political pressures are felt more acutely, more pronounced. A lot of the time the press is captured by various interest groups and the journalism that is produced is almost an extension of whatever these interest groups are fighting over.

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Journalism has been in decline for years, even before Janša’s last government. There has also been a decline in professional standards, and often when you’re reading the news, you’re not sure what you’re reading, whether it's independent journalism or pre-prepared information handed out to journalists to “report” on one of these groups. Journalists in mainstream media here are pushed to produce several stories a week or even in just a day. They have quotas of how many lines they need to write, and this can’t produce in-depth journalism. This trend is bad for the public debate.

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Public media was also directly attacked because the government could. Your newsroom has produced some impactful projects, for instance your “Asset Detector” investigation, which is an open-access database publishing information on the assets of Slovenia’s political officials. What sets Oštro apart from other local newsrooms?

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Delić: One of our main principles is continuous learning – not only to develop future reporters but also ourselves. Aside from inspiring staff members to join workshops and seminars, or bring them to conferences, we also make a point of learning from each other in the newsroom. We believe that journalism needs to go back to its founding principles, and that the public needs to be more involved in what we do.

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We also try to be innovative because that’s also the character of Oštro: to look at things from different perspectives than others do and try to showcase tools and use methods that other media outlets are not using. My ambition is for Oštro to be both a societal and professional corrective.

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We’re looking to appeal to readers that appreciate journalism of the first order and serve our audience. A lot of our investigations are cross-border and global, but we always focus on the public interest of Slovenians. We get on a lot of people’s nerves – from all ends of the political spectrum – so I think we’re doing something good!

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Apart from reporting on stories, your team also publishes a regular fact-checking project. Can you talk about this project in the context of growing disinformation in Slovenia’s media environment, why this operation matters, and how it has shaped your newsroom?

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Delić: Since we started our fact-checking operation about 4.5 years ago, we’ve been fact-checking statements, media articles, speeches by politicians and more. We’ve also been using it to train our reporters. It’s an incubator for future investigative journalists that forces them to face their own biases, develop critical thinking abilities and learn how to discern facts – all very useful skills journalists should know before they start independent research. Once they demonstrate they can follow professional standards and adhere to Oštro’s code of conduct, we gradually include them in investigations. This functionality of our fact-checking operation is important because unfortunately, the standards in our general mainstream media are often very far from professional, and that’s what young reporters see as proper journalism.

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Our student reporters try hard to produce water-tight, fact-checked stories, and then they’re attacked viciously online and on disinformation portals. I’ve seen students decide to leave the profession after just a few years. We’re living in an era of disinformation, and let’s be honest that journalists are part of the problem because when it was time to act against information manipulation, nobody acted.

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What is your focus moving forward and what do you hope to achieve?

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Delić: First, we need to survive and develop our operational side: administration, communication, etc. Until just a few months ago, we didn’t have staff for that. Our journalists have been doing everything from posting on social media to calling the caretaker of our building where we rent our offices because our heaters are not working properly. We need to release journalists from these non-reporting tasks.

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We also want to do a lot more national investigations focusing on topics like corruption, crime, human rights, and environmental issues. There’s currently a huge shortage of core funding opportunities for countries in the European Union, and it’s not easy to get funding for a big national project as a country with a population of only two million. We’re coming into our own and I really hope that in the next five years, with the support from Limelight Foundation and others, we can pursue the stories that are most important to us and our audience.

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