10. 01. 2012

HATE SPEECH IN MEDIA DURING ‘90s

Belgrade, January 10, 2012 (Danas) - Prosecution Investigator Novak Vuco and one of the authors of the book "Words and Misdoing - provoking and supporting war crimes in 1991-92 in media" said that the Prosecution Office for War Crimes would not only publish this one book, but would continue to speak out about the hate speech in media during 90s.

According to Vuco, the book is the result of carefully gathered material that can be relevant in potential criminal procedure.

"We were guided by the idea to point to the behavior of media during 90s, the period that is slowly being buried in collective memory, but which have led to a large number of dead and suffering people.

This pattern of reporting during this period of the last century has proven to be long-reaching, thus having much impact on the reporing of media in Serbia from 2000 to this day, Vuco said.

"Despite legal framework that has improved the sanctioning of hate speech, encouraging actions of judiciary, thorough revision of the profession within itself and adopted journalism codes by both journalists' organizations - NUNS and UNS, which provide for the highest journalistic standards, there is still a question of the cause of such state still being present, twelve and more years after the wars. The rethoric of the right-wing is most openly promoted in daily tabloids and most popular TV channels, which often promote the hate speech."

Campaigns of hate speech get activated in the moments of sensitive issues or events, says Vuco, such as arrest of the indicted for war crimes, the pride parade, Dino Merlin concert, Zeljko Mitrovic's yaht, or a specific person, who is the center of a particular campaign out of varuous reasons, such as again Dino Merlin, leaders of NGOs and so on.

"It can easily be predicted which media will start such campaign. Discrimination in media is visible in reports on committed crimes when the ethnicity of the perpetrator and those of the victim is first pointed out", Novak Vuco said.