03. 01. 2013

GOVERNMENT STILL REPRESS MEDIA

Belgrade, January 3, 2013 (Danas) - Media in Serbia are in a difficult position in all domains - in financial sense, due to an economic crisis, pressures and problems occuring in their work.

The state has not yet withdrawn from ownership in media, while every year millions of Euros are allocated to state media and media in favor of the government, at the expense of other media on the market and the quality of information.

Non-transparent ownership is also one of the sources of problems for the media, as visible in the case of the daily Pres, which has ceased to exist. The owner of Delta Holding Miroslav Miskovic admitted, prior to being arrested and put in one-month detention, to be the owner of this daily. All of these problems were identified in the report on the pressure and control of media, produced by the Anti-Corruption Council. However, the then authorities ignored this report, while the new government, which has promised in the coalition agreement to resolve this issue, has not done anything yet.

Jelisaveta Vasilic, member of the Council, told daily Danas that none of the representatives of the current government had shown interest in this Report on pressures and control of media. Representatives of journalists' associations point out that the problems of media have been "pushed under the rug" for many years and that none of the authorities have been willing to deal with them so far.

Ljiljana Smajlovic, president of the Journalists' Association of Media (UNS), told daily Danas that this association was disappointed with the new government not keeping the promise it had made in the coalition agreement that it would consider the Report of the Anti-Corruption Council, in its last point.

"The new government has indeed started the procedure of amending the legal regulation as announced in the coalition agreement, but the fight against the censorship and self-censorship in media is practically non-existent until we openly say who is intimidating and repressing media and how. We would like to hear what the new government has to say about that", Smajlovic said.