When one reads Croatian papers he or she can learn amazing things: That famous Italians, such as Marco Polo were in fact Croatians, that Croatians are in fact Iranians, that medeval Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and her brilliant culture are in fact Croatian although Ragusa became part of Croatia for the first time in 1939, that Croatians discovered America before Columbus and many other amazing things, more fit fit for supermarket tabloids then respoectable newspapers.
The sad truth is that all this garbage is written by people who call themselves journalists and are card carrying members of the media.
This gem by Branka Magas fits the mould perfectly. When personal dishonesty meets disregard for journalist ethic, the result is an article like this.
the idea that Marco Polo was Croatian is based on a misunderstanding that arose in Korcula (he was captured in the battle that took place near Korcula between Venice and Genoa)...it is played up by the local tourism industry but seems like harmless nonsense. There are some scholars who think that the Croatian name may be originally Iranian (there was an ancient Iranian tribe with a similar name)--possibly an Iranian elite conquered a group of Slavs and left them their name, the way that the Bulgars did to a different group of Slavs (the original Bulgars were not Slavic, but not Iranian either).
The people of medieval Ragusa were Catholics and spoke Croatian or a local Romance language which later died out (known as Dalmatian). A lot of people in the Balkans didn't have a firm ethnic identity until the 19th or 20th century--would have spoken a particular language and had a particular religion, but if illiterate peasants may not have affiliated themselves with one of the modern names.
And of course, to say that Dubrovnik was originally "Serb" on account of the fact that it was founded on a territory invaded by the Serbs in the 7th century is only slightly less true than to say that the Ustashe were Serbs. For almost all of the Ustashe were Herzegovinian Croats and as such, the descendants of Serbs converted to Catholicism by the Franciscans in the early 15th century.