While president Franjo Tudjman's litigation war against the Croatian media has turned into a broad and blunt instrument aimed at cowing criticism, changes at the top of the key propaganda outlets in Zagreb are also fuelling hopes of a freer and more liberal climate in the state-controlled media.

The appointment of Mirko Galic, a respected commentator and former foreign correspondent, to the number two post in Croatian state broadcasting has encouraged the liberals lurking in Croat television to come out of the closet and demand change.

At the state news agency, Hina, the arrival of a new boss, Branko Salaj, a former cabinet Minister, has similarly sown speculation that change is in the air. But the scale of the libel suits against the press issued by government figures, aimed at bullying the media into submission, shows how hard the Tudjman regime finds living with criticism or exposure of the powerful. When President Tudjman celebrated his 75th birthday earlier this year, his courtiers and cronies staged a gala performance in his honour at Zagreb's national theatre. The highly-regarded young Bosnian writer, Miljenko Jergovic, did not think much of the show and said so. In a scathing review, Jergovic, the author of Sarajevo Marlboro, focused on the medieval-like sycophancy of the presidential entourage and ridiculed the show's artistic claims. The doting treatment of the President, Jergovic wrote, recalled the personality cults of the Communist-era Soviet bloc. Deploying the now standard, if lucrative, instrument of repression in the hands of the Croatian regime, the targets of Jergovic's pen promptly turned to the lawyers and the courts. Zlatko Vitez, playwright, presidential adviser, and co-author of the ode to Tudjman, issued a libel writ against Jergovic and the independent weekly magazine, Tjednik, where his columns appear regularly.

Vitez's suit for causing "spiritual pain'' puts the playwright in good company. Tudjman, his family, and the Croatian government, individually and collectively, are all currently in agony, wracked by "spiritual pain'', if the scale of their litigation is any index. Feral Tribune, a Croatian satirical publication, for example, is currently contesting 34 writs for libel and defamation, most of them issued by government officials. They include the President's daughter, Nevenka, who objected to a Feral article on her business activities. She stated publicly she had not read the offending article, but is suing for around 400,000 pounds in damages. Andrija Hebrang, the Health Minister, did not like a Feral article detailing the wretched conditions in a provincial hospital and took it personally, so he sued for 80,000 pounds. When the sensationalist weekly, Globus, recently reported the findings of the US consultants, Kroll, which advised potential foreign investors that Croatia had "one of the most corrupt governments in the world," the entire 22-strong cabinet under the Prime Minister, Zlatko Matesa, sued the magazine for 440,000 pounds in damages. The European Commission and the German corporation, Daimler-Benz, in internal analyses, have reached similar conclusions about rampant corruption in Croatia, but the local media risk confronting bankruptcy if they report such findings. The Defence Ministry also took Globus to court for reporting that an indicted Bosnian Croat war criminal was being sheltered at a Croatian army hotel.

Feral, which fearlessly lampoons the powerful while also specialising in war crimes and corruption investigations, has just received recognition of sorts when its editor, Viktor Ivancic, won the US Committee for the Protection of Journalists award for independent journalism. The award triggered an onslaught by the government-controlled media against Ivancic and his newspaper, apparently without fear of the libel courts. State-controlled television accused Ivancic of journalistic behaviour "unimaginable in the West.'' "Feral Tribune tries to present libel as objective journalism, and the worst mud-slinging and insults of public figures as the height of media freedom, making fun of national feelings, sacred objects and dates like Statehood Day,'' the television complained. The state-controlled news agency, Hina, used the occasion to issue its first ever commentary, denouncing Ivancic and his newspaper, which also faces a potential bill of 1.6 million pounds in damages were it to lose the dozens of libel cases pending against it. "All of this could turn into a system,'' a Feral editorial warned, "for those in power to control and cripple the media which they do not directly influence already.'' Salaj, the new Hina boss, ordered that the agency commentary on Ivancic be written, disappointing Hina staff who hoped that his appointment last summer would signal an improvement on the usual diet of stultifying regurgitation of official pronouncements. He canvassed staff views on the working of the agency, told employees that he intended to raise standards and allow them to operate as "normal'' journalists. But if his close connections to the people in power in Croatia got him the job, he appears ill suited, through his lack of experience as a journalist, for the task of running a news agency. His publicly stated objective is to raise standards, be "serious and responsible," and eschew "sensationalism."

But his decision to order an assault on one of the country's most talented and respected journalists, Ivancic, showed that the old habits die hard. Hina does not ordinarily write or issue "commentaries."The Ivancic case was the exception.

The ferocity of the state television assault on Ivancic also belied notions that liberal reforms were on the way. But under the leadership of Galic, the former Paris correspondent just made head of programming at state television, a campaign has been launched for reform. Going by the name of Forum-21, a bunch of journalists working for the state-controlled broadcaster as well as some from the independent media are demanding an end to political interference in television and radio.

Among the 23 signatories of the Forum-21 petition are 14 from Croatian state television, including Galic and the TV's foreign editor. They are calling for media liberalisation, privatisation, and the establishment of a proper public-service broadcaster to replace the current state TV, which is a mouthpiece for the regime and invariably kicks off its news bulletins with deferential reports on the President's activities that day, however inconsequential.

Having convinced the Council of Europe that the press freedom situation had improved sufficiently to to allow Croatia in as its 40th member country last year, Presdident Franjo Tudjman once again clamped down on the media during 1997, to ensure that the population were fed propaganda on state-run television and docile print media outlets. Those newspapers which refuse to toe the line - such as the satirical weekly, Feral Tribune and the outspoken weekly, Globus - are unceremoniously punished in the courts, and 1997 was no exception. In one piece of good news, the independent station, Radio 101, won its long-standing, politically charged with the authorities over its ownership on November 4, obtaining a five-year broadcasting licence for the city of Zagreb, the capital. Before and after he was returned to power in June's Presidential elections, Tudjman lashed out at Croatia's independent media, calling them enemies of the state. His regime and ensuring that prominent newspapers got the message not to overdo the criticism by instigating trials against them - or in the case of two Feral Tribune journalists, retrials.

Last year, Tudjman had been angered by photo-montages in Feral Tribune which portrayed him as a gangster with homburg hat and machine-gun, side by side with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic dressed in studded, sado-masochistic leather wear. The paper's editor, Viktor Ivanic, and top reporter, Marinko Culic, had been cleared in September 1996 on charges of insulting the President - in a municipal court verdict hailed at the time as a much-needed boost for freedom of the press in Croatia. But on May 7 this year, it was announced that the two journalists were to be retried on the same charges, after a country court overruled the lower court's decision to acquit them.