Croatian News Agency (HINA) was established in 1990 as Croatia’s official news agency. The news wire offers news in both Croatian and English.
Media assets
News agency: HINA
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
HINA was created through the HINA Law adopted in 1990. Initially, the agency was owned by the government. Through a new HINA law, adopted in 2001, HINA was transformed from a state-owned agency into an independent public media institution.
The main governing structure at HINA is a governing board that consists of a President, a Vice-President and three members, all appointed by parliament. One of the HINA board members must be an employee of the agency, another person should be a media expert and three members are appointed from other fields (finance, law and IT).
In presenting its work and editorial and financial performance, HINA is accountable to the Ministry of Culture, which approved the agency’s activity reports.
Source of funding and budget
HINA is financed through a combination of state funds and commercial revenues. The state fund mechanism has been built to prevent interference by authorities with the operation of the agency. Thus, the funds from the state are channeled to HINA through what is known as a collective subscription agreement: as of 2004, HINA and the Ministry of Culture every year sign annual framework agreements on collective subscription to HINA’s news and information content to be used by public administration authorities and other authorities that are financed from the state budget.
On the other hand, HINA also sells its content to private users and sells ads.In 2022, HINA had total revenue of HRK 28.5m (US$ 3.7m), nearly 60% of which was generated through the collective subscription agreement, according to a company financial report. Another 34% came from sales of subscriptions to private users. The remainder of 6% or so was the result of the agency’s commercial sales.
Editorial independence
In spite of provisions aimed at guaranteeing the independence of HINA stipulated by the HINA Law, in practice, the agency is not independent of the government, being often dubbed as a propaganda tool of the government.
HINA has a domestic statute that consists of several provisions aimed at securing the independence of the agency. However, in recent years, there has been evidence that the agency’s editorial independence is not respected.
HINA does not have an assessment/oversight mechanism that would validate its independence.
October 2023