SiolNET is the oldest news portal in Slovenia, covering a wide range of topics. It was established in 1996 by Telekom Slovenije, the country’s leading telecom provider.
Media assets
News portal: SiolNET
State Media Matrix Typology: Independent State Managed/Owned (ISM)
Ownership and governance
SiolNET is owned and managed by TSmedia, a company wholly controlled by Telekom Slovenije. Telekom Slovenije is a telecom service provider, the majority of which is controlled by the Slovenian government. As of March 2022, the Slovenian government held more than a 62% stake in the telco, according to company data.
In recent years, Telekom Slovenija has been attempting to sell TSmedia as part of its strategy to divest from non-core activities. However, in May 2021, the telecommunications company announced that it had abandoned plans to sell the portal despite receiving a generous offer from a Serbian businessman. Media reports suggested that the government was interested in selling the portal to a Hungarian oligarch with ties to the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Following the loss in the April 2022 elections by the right-wing government of former Prime Minister Janez Janis, these plans are unlikely to materialize.
Source of funding and budget
SiolNET is funded through commercial revenues. According to the most recent publicly available data, TSmedia generated total revenues of €6.4m and incurred a loss of approximately €318,000 in 2019.
Editorial independence
SiolNET has been significantly politicized, with the previous government under Janez Jansa controlling the portal’s editorial agenda through the editor-in-chief, Peter Jancic.
The new ruling coalition that assumed control of the Slovenian government after the April 2022 elections has taken action. In November 2022, Mihael Sustarsic, a journalist from the news agency STA, was appointed as the chief editor at SiolNET, replacing Petr Jansic. This move was criticized by various journalists and analysts, who viewed it as an attempt by the newly installed government to control the editorial agenda at the news portal. Some critics argued that the appointment was unjustified since the web portal performed exceptionally well in audience size, denouncing the decision as a purge.
However, the newly appointed editor-in-chief has provided reasonable explanations for all editorial decisions that have been criticized as favorable to the new government. Simultaneously, ad hoc content analysis conducted for this report in May 2023 and February 2024 has shown a more balanced editorial coverage at SiolNET since the new editor took over the portal. This explains the change of category in our State Media Matrix Typology from the Captured Public/State-Owned Media (CaPu) category to the Independent State Managed/Owned (ISM) category.
August 2024