Slovenian News Agency (STA) was established in June 1991, just days before the declaration of the country’s independence. The agency offers news in various formats, freely available or sold to paying subscribers. It also runs an English service.
Media assets
News agency: STA
State Media Matrix Typology: Independent State Funded and State Managed (ISFM)
Ownership and governance
A limited liability company owned by the state, STA is governed by the Slovenian News Agency Law of 2011, which is supposed to ensure transparency of the agency’s financing and operations. STA is governed by a Supervisory Board appointed by the National Assembly with the absolute majority, a measure aimed at preventing powerful political parties from imposing their own candidates. The board in turn appoints the agency’s general director through an open call for applications.
However, after the return to power of right-wing politician Janez Jansa, the government began an attack against the editorial independence of the country’s public media (RTVSLO and STA) that was expected to strengthen the government’s role in the STA’s governance structures. In October 2021, the head of the STA, Bojan Veselinovic, resigned, after rejecting a draft contract with the government, which, Veselinovic, claimed, was going to make the agency fully controlled by the government (see Source of funding and budget below).
Source of funding and budget
STA is funded through a combination of state subsidy and commercial revenues (mostly sales of news content and subscriptions). In recent years, STA has managed to decrease its dependence on the government by boosting its sales revenues. Yet, the company’s allocation from the state budget (paid to STA to perform its public service mission as an independent news agency) still accounts for more than 50% of its annual budget, according to the latest annual report for 2019.
Legal changes, announced by the government in July 2020, which would replace the government allocation with part of the revenue from the license fee (now charged to finance RTVSLO), were expected to financially cripple the public broadcaster RTVSLO, giving the government more influence over its operations.
The government withheld state funds from STA during most of the year 2021, destabilizing the agency and securing the government control over its editorial agenda. In November 2021, the government agreed to release the state funds to the agency, but that is far from solving the outlet’s situation.
Eventually, in November 2021, STA signed an agreement with the government, giving the agency access to government funds and thus allowing it to carry out its activities. The situation stabilized in January 2023 when the government approved a new contract with STA that confirmed a state subsidy of roughly €2.7m, an increase of 10% compared to the year before. The approval allowed the agency to perform its activities.
The budget approval follows a decision by the government in December 2022 to abolish controversial regulations introduced by the previous regime that made the state funding allocation conditional on a set of quantitative performance indicators that prevented the agency from pursuing its public service mission.
Editorial independence
Although Slovenia has had six different governments since the STA Act was adopted in 2011, Slovenian News Agency managed to protect its independence thanks to a set of legal provisions, which copy the French legislation governing France’s newswire AFP, according to which “under no circumstances” the agency would be dependent on any ideological, political or economic group. These specific provisions were removed in July 2020 from the amended STA Act, which posed a serious threat to STA’s future independence.
In December 2022, the government scrapped a series of regulations that required STA to comply with a set of conditions, such as quotas on editorial output production, which were said to make the agency dependent on the government. Although the removal of these rules was welcomed by the STA’s journalists, a proper revision of the STA Act is needed to introduce further legal provisions that would ensure the total editorial independence of the agency.
STA is governed by a set of strict legal provisions aimed at establishing and protecting its independence.
As a mechanism of assessment and oversight, annual reports of the STA must be approved by parliament, which can use this opportunity to dismiss the management of STA. That has not happened since the adoption of the STA Act in 2011.
October 2023