10. 12. 2013

Media sensationalist, courts inaccessible

Belgrade, December 10, 2013 (Beta) - Media in Serbia rely too much on sensationalism and do not pay attention to ethical codes in reporting on judiciary topics, while on the other hand, judicial system does not understand media needs and is not accessible enough. This is the participants' conclusion at the gathering "Judicial system and media" held in Belgrade.

At the gathering in Media center, experiences of Serbia and Germany were compared. German judicial system, and therefore its relation to media, is more organized than the Serbian, but still there are some similar problems and dilemmas, the participants agreed.

"Tension in relations between the judicial system and media will always exist and that will never change. I do not see that as a bad thing, since it is precisely due to that tension, that there is a mutual control", the Berlin District Court Chairman, Bjorn Retzlaff estimated.

He said that German public is also mostly interested in the most sensationalist topics relating to famous people and that sometimes the line is crossed when exposing to public personal details from individual cases.

He gave an example of a case of one TV host, who was charged for the alleged rape. He was acquitted of all charges, but, according to Retzlaff, irretrievable damage was done to him because of media reporting.

The jugde of the Appeal Court in Belgrade Dragana Boljevic emphasized that, as opposed to Germany, the judicial system and media in Serbia are burdened with some basic problems such as independence, influence of politics, limited media space for some topics.

"No one understands journalists better than us judges, we know what life of journalists is like, the pressure they are faced with and too much influence of political power", Boljevic said.

She said that the Serbian courts do not have sufficient number of trained spokespersons, who would feel the need of the media, and most of all the necessity of information to be accessible as fast as possible and written in understandable language.