01. 08. 2005

JOURNALISTS’ ETHICS

BELGRADE, August 1, 2005 – The media report of the Belgrade Media Center showed that the journalists have not respected the rule that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Belgrade dailies Kurir and Glas Javnosti are leading in the number of articles on violence over children and minors and in which the code of ethics was breached by publishing the names and photographs of victims or suspects, while dailies Politika and Danas, according to the reports of the Media Center, had almost none. The report dealt with the violation of ethics in print media, stating that the journalists ought to respect the rule that no one was guilty until proven otherwise. The reporting of journalists in print media was based on sensationalism, huge amount of gossip, groundless accusations, rumors, fabricated letters or letters of unidentified authors, said in the report. Psychologist Vesna Brzev Curcic said that the eruption of reports on child abuse in print media in Serbia was caused not so much by the frequency of such incidences, but the fact that the society started to open up toward the issue. “The abuse has become recognizable as a social phenomenon. It stopped being the taboo and there are more experts that deal with the issue. People are being more encouraged to report the abuse. Certain legal measures and regulations have been implemented. There are not so many cases of abuse as much as our media writes about them”, said Brzev Curcic. Vesna Brzev Curcic stressed that the front page of the newspapers, which showed the photograph of the suspect for child abuse and murder of a child with the headline: “Look at him, Serbia: he murdered a child!”, was regarded as a violation over the readers. She also said that nobody, particularly the media, must not convict before the valid verdict of the court of law. A nine-year-old raped? Milan Jankovic was taken to one-month detention for allegedly raping nine-year-old M.V. The police reported that the investigative judge of the Valjevo District Court Milan Aleksic had detained Jovanovic for suspicion of raping a girl on July 28. Jankovic is a refugee from a place near Vakuf in Bosnia and Herzegovina with temporary residence in village Patkovaca near Bijeljina. Jankovic was working as a wage laborer in villages near Valjevo. He met the girl’s father last year, when he helped him with three cutting. According to the police reports, the decision on detention was brought to prevent Jankovic of escaping and influencing the witnesses during the investigation.