Croatian news website Index.hr expressed support for N1 on Thursday, days after cable television provider A1 had announced that they would stop carrying N1 television on March 29. Along with Index.hr, other news websites such as Morski.hr, Tris.com.hr, and Antena Zadar also expressed support for N1... Thank you all!

“Government regulations which allow a monopoly or duopoly (on the media market) which can literally shut down a news outlet if the ruling party doesn’t like it is completely unacceptable to Index. This is not ‘normal business practice’ nor can be seen as ‘business relationships between companies’ – it’s merely a case of a corrupt failed state.

Apart from the symbolic support, which we have hereby stated in the clearest way so far, our colleagues (and secondly, competitors) at N1 can count on Index for any other type of concrete support. The symbolic support is here because we want to help highlight the problem. Without doing that, things like these can often end up shut down, trampled on, and forgotten. We won’t let that happen,” said founder of Index, Matija Babic, in a Facebook post.

Messages of support were also published by news websites Morski.hr, Tris.com.hr, and Antena Zadar.

Dear colleagues, thank you from our hearts!

We would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the messages of support pouring in from our readers and viewers.

Earlier this week, cable television provider A1 announced that they would stop carrying channels produced by United Media – N1 television and Sport Klub – on March 29, after negotiations to extend the existing contract had failed.

“The offer to carry a channel which is of national interest such as N1 had been forwarded by United Media to A1 on February 25, and they showed no interest to reach an agreement. They thanked us for our offer and refused to continue our cooperation.

We are very surprised by the decision made by A1 not to extend our contract on channel distribution, especially having in mind that they had been offered absolutely the same conditions that were in place until now. We had cooperated with them for many years, and we regret that we will not continue to do so – in spite of best efforts on our part to make it happen.

United Media believes that the promises made by the Croatian government, who had announced new legislation which would harmonize the rules with EU laws, would happen within the promised timeframe, in order to liberalize the market, allow healthy competition, and in the end, is in the interest of Croatia’s citizens,” United Media said.