A shot from the latest Elán music video, Bulvárne krysy (Tabloid Rats). It mocks tabloid journalists. (source: Fičí)
Just one year after a Slovak investigative journalist and his fiancée were murdered in 2018, a new video released by the popular Slovak band, Elán, is facing a lot of backlash.
“Boys, I guess we all realise it is the right time to exterminate the rats,” Jozef Ráž, Elán’s frontman, says in the Bulvárne Krysy (Tabloid Rats) music video.
The band hunts down four people, who are tabloid journalists and photographers, in the second part of the video. The journalists and photographers are then seen kneeling with sacks on their heads in a room where three Elán band members come to shoot them.
While Ráž points a pistol replica at a journalist, another member, Vašo Patejdl, puts Ráž’s gun down and sprays water from a water gun at journalists. Then they all laugh at the journalists’ scared faces.
“The song and its video are aimed, exclusively, at the tabloid media, and has nothing to do with serious journalism,” the band stated at the end of the video.
Elán published the video on October 13, 2019. Since then, it has been viewed nearly 180,000 times.
International criticism
Not only Slovaks and the Slovak media but also the Reporters Without Borders organisation has criticised Elán’s new music video.
The band, however, says they highly appreciate and respect the work done by those in the media industry, who provide relevant information to the public.
They added that the lyrics, which attack tabloid journalists, were written by former journalist Juraj Soviar, who worked for several dailies in the past, the Hospodárske Noviny daily reported.
