"Thunderous silence" urged on World Press Freedom Day

"Thunderous silence" urged on World Press Freedom Day

The aim of the campaign is to alert the public to the worsening situation of the journalistic profession in Serbia and around the world.

"NUNS urges media professionals to together oppose a further degradation of the journalistic profession and do everything to restore the citizens' trust," said the organization.

It added that the role and the goal of media professionals must be to freely and responsibly inform the public, rather than "fulfill the desire of the political and economic establishment."

A statement also said that "the state and the authorities must provide journalists and the media in Serbia with conditions for free work in the interest of citizens, without pressure and censorship" while "media legislation needs to get off the ground in order to create conditions for the freedom of information, as well as for a free and fair competition in the media market."

As stated, the state of media freedoms in Serbia is characterized by "the deepening poverty of journalists and other media professionals," hundreds of media workers laid off during the previous year, and "humiliatingly low wages" paid to thousands - even in profitable media companies.

Reports on Friday mentioned that the Freedom House NGO this year ranked Serbia a partially free countries on its list of media freedoms. The OSCE in Serbia and NUNS will on May 4 mark World Press Freedom Day with a debate on "the preservation of the public interest through the protection of journalistic privacy and journalistic sources."

On May 5, NUNS and the U.S embassy in Belgrade will award prizes "for the greatest achievements in investigative journalism."

Restrictions and pressure

The Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) published a proclamation ahead of World Press Freedom Day, in which it states that "freedom of the media in Serbia is seriously endangered because journalism has not been in a more difficult economic situation in recent history."

"We urge journalists and media workers to interrupt their electronic media broadcasts from 11:55 until 12:00 (on Tuesday) and read the proclamation or publish it on the screen, and in online and print media," said UNS.

A statement also pointed out that "in the year behind us, even the municipal police gave themselves the right to restrict the work of journalists" while local authorities used the withdrawal of the state from media ownership to drastically reduce funding, "and in that way carry out additional pressure on the freedom of the media."

UNS stressed that due to privatizations, some 1,000 journalists and media workers lost their jobs, while some have also been denied their right to severance benefits.

Greater transparency

Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic congratulated journalists on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, and wished they would "achieve several goals that are important for both journalists and the media, and society as a whole."

In this regard, he stressed the need to achieve greater transparency of media ownership, public availability of information on media financing from public funds and on other potential possibilities of exercising influence on the media.

The commissioner also stressed the need to combat the phenomenon of self-censorship and "the conflicts" in the sphere of electronic media, including attacks on some sites and activities of "the so-called bot structures" - and in particular, the need to ending the ever increasing tabloidization of the media and society, accompanied by frequent "leaking of of various confidential information" to some media, that at the same time remains unavailable to others.

Sabic also wished journalists "a higher level of personal security, stressing that the role of the state is crucial, and certainly includes punishing all those who threaten the safety of journalists." In this regard, he expressed his regret that "even after many years those who inspired and carried out the murders of Slavko Curuvija, Dada Vujasinovic and Milan Pantic have not been discovered and punished."