Dear colleagues,
Each year, the RTV Slovenia Awards Committee has the honor of judging, in accordance with the regulations, which individuals or groups of employees will be awarded awards for exceptional achievements in the creation and operation of RTV Slovenia. RTV is certainly one of the Slovenian institutions with the greatest diversity of professions, of which a large number are in short supply: performing these jobs cannot be ensured solely with formal professional education without experience in areas that are largely covered by our company in Slovenia. When employees leave, knowledge, positive work enthusiasm and pride in belonging to a collective of creators often also leave, a positive spirit that we still need today. Our community includes both technological pioneers and top cultural and media personalities with abilities that can be compared to stars in large media markets. The creative potential of our employees adapts to Slovenian conditions, but creates a valuable domestic cultural landscape, which is also carefully documented and preserved as an object of national heritage. RTV was in the past and still is today, a breeding ground for media and cultural ideas, a media springboard for Slovenian creators, an incubator of professional knowledge, a promoter of scientific achievements.
Every year, RTV Slovenia creators receive a number of domestic and foreign awards for their contributions and broadcasts. The RTV awards to its employees, which we are presenting today, also include those profiles without which our company could not operate successfully, although employees in these positions are not necessarily exposed to the public. These include, for example, administrative services, stage workers, laboratory, computer support, designers, security engineers, lawyers, broadcasters, various editors, and others. Let us remember our editor Janez Bitenc, the author of the legendary children’s song Kuža pazi, who in 1953 directed the Avsenik brothers towards pioneering eclectic creation of folk music for the program Thursday Evening of Home Songs and Chants. The program celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. Our employees included Mojmir Sepe, Urban Koder, Jani Golob, Prešeren Prize winner, conductor Anton Nanut, puppeteer Edi Majaron, writers Milan Dekleva, Ervin Fritz, Janez Menart, Frane Milčinski Ježek, Žarko Petan, Ciril Zlobec, Tone Pavček, and last but not least Vlado Kreslin, a long line of successful creators who have also shaped significant life careers, our current President of the Republic Nataša Pirc Musar and Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon, legendary journalist Jurij Gustinčič, Tomaž Terček, Janez Čuček, Janez Stanič, our exceptional voices Ivan Lotrič, Nataša Dolenc, Ajda Kalan, the dying profile of proofreaders, experts in speech culture, and so on. More than one executive publicly stated in the final phase of his term that he only now has a rough idea of the scale and complexity of our institution. How much does everyone know about this? Every new employee at the RTV institution should first educate themselves about the history of our institution and make them aware of what kind of house they are entering. Make them aware that it didn’t all start with them. But history teaches us that we learn little from history.
When we look back at the recent past, from which this year’s awards to our employees are derived, we cannot ignore the turbulent times for our institution. Electrifying public debates, a referendum, a change to the RTV Act, a constitutional review and a strike by our journalist colleagues, which stems from their professional and existential distress. Approximately 10 percent of all employees in our institution hold a journalistic microphone, which gives them the media power to co-create public opinion and potentially cause pain now to one, now to the other political side. Thus, we hear in the public that RTV has been hijacked by rightists, and secondly, that it has been hijacked by leftists. This is followed by various pressures on RTV, which all employees feel. Financing is unregulated, we shyly flirt with the RTV contribution and therefore we excessively broadcast advertisements for a public medium. Because the complex organizational chart of the institute is relatively poorly connected socially and professionally, i.e. we have insufficient internal piar, 90 percent of the remaining employees think that they could otherwise do their work in peace and with sufficient finances if they were not collateral damage to the punished journalists due to their entanglements with the public. The opposite aspect is, of course, that fellow journalists are collateral damage to the remaining passive 90 percent of employees who do not recognize their professional skepticism that the earth is not flat. The truth is that a sword has two edges, but a tongue has a hundred. Since all publicly available information activities are streamed over the world wide web, in the near future in Slovenia we will also use artificial intelligence to clearly define and summarize from which sources the information comes, what is the path of this information, where it was supplemented or modified, how many times and where it was used, and the content will be revalued and classified according to the desired parameters, e.g. on their political orientation, whether they are originally generated by this or that interest group, political party, or are approaching this or that ideology. But of course, if such transparency is in someone’s interest. With the help of the artificial intelligence tools of the Jožef Stefan Institute, any interested public already has the opportunity to objectively and without communication noise see what truths are published in a particular medium; and most importantly, what truths are published within the framework of RTV programs. Two key opposing truths, which create an ambivalent view of Slovenians on their semi-past history and tirelessly polarize its current political landscape, exhaust the country, divide the people who live in it and, last but not least, tear RTV SLO to pieces, because our house is the most beautiful mirror of the state of the country, for this purpose it was also established. RTV is the central media and thus also the central cultural institution in Slovenia. We are wrong if our thought first leads us, for example, to Ljubljana’s Cankarjev dom, which has a viewership equal to the size of its halls. RTV SLO summarizes and stores the events, if possible, of most important cultural, religious, informational, sports and other venues, as it is committed to providing content for all segments of the population. Also for the deaf, blind, cognitively limited, sensory impaired people and for intellectuals. Perhaps in the future the norm of general tolerance will reach such a level that smart people will be forbidden to think, so as not to offend those who do not. Man is inclined to automate his life, which is why he surrenders to the type of information that he accepts uncritically. We often have neither the time nor the energy to engage in original research and judgment, which is why we buy information similar to a food product in a store. If a critical number of repetitions of information, such as an advertisement, is reached, there is a high possibility that we will buy the product in an irrational, emotional, impulsive way. We do this because it is faster and less mentally demanding for us.
The success of each RTV management is externally verified by optimizing work processes and reducing labor costs. Each subsequent management believes that there are still hidden internal financial and personnel reserves and that the previous management has not yet utilized all the possibilities. The recursive nature of this phenomenon causes considerable concern for the general directors, since they have no other option to make a first impression. How to stand out even more than their predecessor, how to make the best possible moves economically and in terms of public opinion, without pushing public RTV into an increasingly market-driven turbo-capitalist environment. It seems that we can constantly increase the number of created content, with even fewer employees and in even less time, but this happens at the expense of quality. We are reducing our own production and replacing it with ready-made products that we publish, but we must ask ourselves to what extent and why the resale of media content justifies national subsidies. We wonder when we will employ a cheaper workforce that does not even know Slovenian. How is it possible that the external image of RTV is conditioned by political propaganda? Aren’t we the ones who co-create Slovenian public opinion? If our messages have such weight, how come we are self-destructive? How is it that with all the professional and intellectual potential, which is undoubtedly the great capital of our institution, we are inadequately advertised externally and our public image is always evaluated partially? Of course, it is a natural process that programs, broadcasts, knowledge and skills emerge for various reasons and then disappear again, are dispersed in a series of new contents. RTV is a sensitive organism, many of the knowledge and structures it possesses have developed with the care and love of its employees, they needed time to grow organically and to bear quality fruits. Abolishing such structures or saying goodbye to colleagues who, based on the experience they have gained, have developed into top experts is always an act worthy of reflection and strategic consideration of how to move forward.
This note, this introductory address to this year’s RTV Awards ceremony, is also a brief review, a fleeting impression of a complex machine, whose smaller or larger wheels are represented by all of us present at this event, as well as all of those absent and all those stars who have gone to our sky forever and shine for us.
We are aware that the recipients of the RTV Awards dedicate a good part of your creative energies to our house, that you find your meaning in life in it, that you are truly internally motivated for your work and create added value to your work goals. Many of you have shaped your lives around your job and internalized it to the point that the line between private and business has almost blurred in the course of your everyday life. Some of you are lucky enough to have managed to share your empirical knowledge and experience with others. Today’s event is dedicated to you, dear colleagues, to thank you for your above-average work achievements, for all your selfless actions and for the goodwill that has helped to establish everything that counts in our lives. Thank you.
Dr. Žiga Stanič,
member of the RTV Slovenia Awards Commission