Ljubljana - If public broadcaster RTV Slovenija wants to regain its viewers and listeners's trust lost in the many attacks by the Democratic Party (SDS) over the years, especially the last two, and get back to normal, it will have to get rid of the journalists that Mladina magazine labels as "SDS warriors" in its editorial on Friday.

The weekly says that one needs to look at the media owned by the SDS or floating in its orbit to understand why Janez Janša's propaganda chief Uroš Urbanija has been appointed as TV Slovenija director and why it was said that Janša's most loyal quasi journalists will be hired by the public broadcaster.

"The SDS, underestimating the general public, has built a large media cluster including Nova24TV, Planet TV, Demokracija, at least 24 quasi-local news sites and several radio stations, as well as Siol and, of course, through political capture, the public RTV Slovenija."

The SDS seems to be busy trying to fully transform RTV Slovenija to make it part of its propaganda machine, but it is in fact working on ways to finance its expensive propaganda machine, which was made for the times when the SDS is in power channelling public funds into it.

Soon after the April general election these media started running out of money, Viktor Orban is pulling the plug on his services, staff working there are nervous as they know how hard it is to survive when "the master is in the opposition".

The SDS will try solve this problem by shifting the cost of the staff onto the public system by employing as many as possible at TV Slovenija to make its channel two its own TV, counting on the rest of the staff there not daring or being able to challenge the remains of Janšism.

Mladina fears that the SDS's plan will succeed because a new leadership will probably pretend to have nothing to do with the staff loyal to Janša, a scenario that has played out every after each SDS attack on RTV Slovenija so far, with the weekly adding that "fighting the vultures from the SDS is an exhausting battle".

However, it was the approach of leaving the SDS staff untouched that has severely affected the broadcaster over the decades, preventing it from returning to normal. TV Slovenija will thus have to carry out the cleansing, "these SDS warriors ... will have to lose their jobs" or else there will be no normalisation.

What is more, a new leadership should treat developments over the past two years as criminal acts, because they amounted to a deliberate abuse of the public service and funds. The staff loyal to the SDS should thus be treated as having overstepped their powers and violated the law, including the director general, says the editorial Crime at RTV Slovenija.