FERAL TRIBUNE SHUTS DOWN IN CROATIA

Last week, Croatian finance ministry froze bank accounts of the region’s legendary political weekly, Feral Tribune, due to 68,000 Euros of tax debt, forcing the publication to close.

Founded in 1984, the Croatian-language magazine was not in the spotlight until Yugoslavia’s collapse in the early 1990s. For the past 14 years, however, Feral Tribune has been reporting on the subjects that most other media did not dare approach - and has survived quite a number of lawsuits.

Here’s how Ex-YU Press, a self-described “‘insider’ source about the events in the former Yugoslavia,” characterized Feral Tribune:

The magazine, to our knowledge, has no counterpart in the West. Its satire is too daring for mainstream advertisers, its reporting too uncompromising for mainstream politicians. Feral Tribune’s mission is not merely to report news and entertain, but also to help turn its readers into better human beings!

In 2004 Feral Tribune sells about 30,000 copies per issue and boasts with almost fanatical readership in Croatia, abroad and all parts of the former Yugoslavia, readership that was prepared to pay court imposed fines and thereby save its magazine. Its editorial policy remains unpalatable for mainstream advertisers, which resulted in the demise of an attempt to publish a luxury color edition of the magazine.

As one commenter explained at Bosnia Vault, the magazine’s current problems have to do with Croatia’s taxation system - namely, the comparatively huge value-added tax (VAT) levied on newspapers:

It seems that Feral Tribune has a massive outstanding VAT bill. I find it difficult to credit that Croatia imposes 22% VAT on newspapers. In the UK books and newspapers are zero-rated for VAT. During the first half of the 19th century Britain had a newspaper tax which was considered a “tax on knowledge”. It would be very difficult for any politician to try and bring in that sort of levy again. It obviously promotes domination of the media by commercially successful publications that are less likely to challenge the rich and powerful.

Bosnia Vault had mentioned Feral Tribune in one of its past entries, too:

Combining satirical and analytical journalism, the basic message it proclaimed was that not all Croats were the same, set out to kill Muslims and Serbs. And not all Serbs were the same, set out to kill Croats.

Written at times in a deeply ironic prose, Feral Tribune utilize wit and common sense to talk about the war in a way that very few papers were capable of doing.