The allures of journalism and football are probably contained in their simplicity and thus – unlike literature or figure skating – every football spectator has an illusion that he could be the coach of the national team, just like every reader thinks he could be a journalist.

Miroslav Ciro Blazevic is a bastard of these two illusions: The man who came in third in the 1998 World Championships in France as the selector of the Croatian national team decided towards the end of his career to try something that he, and perhaps even his employers, think is journalism: He commented on matches at the European Championships in Portugal and even appeared, as a journalist, at press conferences, of course running the show.

It goes without saying that newspapers, TV, radio and the internet, like football, are not asylums for exclusive figures, but rather general commodities, democratic legacies, consumed by millions of readers or spectators. In order to be what they are, they must maintain their democratic character. Croatian journalism, in this regard at least, has an advantage over Croatian football: A formal education and a license are required for football selectors, while for being a journalist – or at least calling oneself so – a license is not required. Anyone can be a self-declared journalist, including Ciro Blazevic who comments on what is going on in Portugal for Nova TV, a private television station, like hundreds of other football experts in the world.

And that would be the end of the story if Ciro Blazevic was not kicking the ball, his style, between the legs of both the spectators and the journalists. First Blazevic, as a journalist, attacks at a press conference the Croatian national football team selector Otto Baric, using the fact that, after all, he is a greater authority in football than his successor, which is allowed, even welcome, for why would not journalists be greater experts than those they speak or write about.

Blazevic’s attack was seen by the Croatian Journalist Society (HND) and quickly, in a press release, his act was called the “twilight of Croatian journalism.” They went a step further, actually two steps back, in a press release where they say that “at EURO 2004 certain ‘journalists,’ even editors, and hosts directly, or indirectly, are advertising sponsors or products, which is outright inadmissible.” And they stopped there, making a threat that if the unidentified persons did not heed the warning, they would inform the HND Honor Chamber and other journalist institutions. And they stopped there.

Unfortunately, what is happening in the “twilight of Croatian journalism” is night-blindness” as a symptom in the Croatian Journalist Society: They only see Ciro Blazevic who advertises beer, draped with a journalist cloak put on him every Portugal evening by no one other than Ivan Blazicko, equally a propagandist who advertises the same kind of beer and deceives the public that he is also a journalist.

Blazicko, during the war in Croatia, as a sports journalist became the news program editor for state-run Croatian Television, and is now the director of the private Nova TV.

This duo unfailingly pours foaming beer into the football story – Blazevic does this both in the regular advertisement program and in what should be called the sports news program. This duo is so successful and suggestive that after the Croatian team’s first match in Portugal, played against Switzerland, it induced Croatian Minister of Science, Education and Sport Dragan Primorac to raise his glass high in honor of the beer in question, probably as a message both to school kids and to athletes (After Primorac, the program hosted some other politicians with a glass of beer in their hand, but they did not appear as shocking as the youngest member of the Croatian Government, in light of the proximity of alcohol in their everyday lives).

There are – even beyond journalism – quite a lot of sad elements in this story, but the saddest ones are not Blazicko who is compromising the profession in the race for profits, nor Blazevic who ran into the profession considering it to be as muddy as the football one, nor the minister who can easily be dribbled past; the saddest thing is that no one from the profession ran out and told the boys, the half-journalists, half-football players, half-beer drinkers, in clear language that they cannot at the same time pose as journalists and naked propagandists, and that this is inadmissible under the code of journalism.

Of course it would be pretentious to expect this in a society of upturned values. The HND leadership, as well as the Croatian Ministry of Culture, find it easier to raise their voice to condemn news broadcast on the Index.hr portal that the show business star Severina’s private and harmless porno film had leaked on the Internet, which they accompanied by several of her almost innocent screenshots, than to get it up at prostitution on the far more powerful television medium.

“Publication of these photographs constitutes a violation of the law and one of the gravest forms of violation of professional principles and ethics,” thundered Dragutin Lucic, HND President, in Severina’s protection, while in the Blazevic and Blazicko case, the tone was lowered and the words softened: “Certain ‘journalists,’ even editors, and hosts directly, or indirectly, are advertising sponsors or products, which is outright inadmissible.”

What is the difference? The former phenomenon is scandalizing because it is out of the ordinary, but the latter does not cause shock – because it has become customary. Typical of a conservative society: Public condemnation of pornography and tacit tolerance of prostitution.

Goran Vezic is journalist of STINA news agency and Media Online correspondent from Split, Croatia. Translation by: K. H. ã Media Online 2004. All rights reserved.