11. 10. 2005

CODE AND FINES

BELGRADE, October 11, 2005 – The Independent Association of Serbian Journalists (NUNS) and Press Council of the Belgrade Media Center announced last week the drafting of the new Code of Ethics for journalists, together with the Association of Serbian Journalists (UNS). There are several documents that frame the professional conduct, the Code of the International Journalists’ Association among them, whose members are the two leading Serbian associations. However, the unified Code will endorse additional obligations regarding the respect of ethical standards in journalism. In the meantime, according to the analysis of the Media Center’s Press Council, the media in Serbia regularly violate the norms of the profession. The reaction of the public prosecutor was necessary on many occasions, since certain dailies published articles that mocked the public and corresponded to primitivism and most often crime. For that reason, the Council stopped including the publishing of Srpski Nacional in the monitoring, which, according to the editor of Beta News Agency and member of the Council Dragan Janjic, “publish pornography and explicit violence”. The tabloids are still leading in the violations of the right to privacy, naming underage persons, partial approach to destinies of common people, and hunt for sensationalism. However, they are closely followed by other newspapers as well. “The uncensored publishing of unverified information on politicians or other people is a big problem. The journalists follow the sensational approach and an awkward political model which usually comes down to conflicts between political parties. The tabloids frequently publish fabricated ‘news’ or personally go after some people”, said Janjic. Janjic also said that for the past eight months of Council’s monitoring of the Belgrade dailies, the writings of the daily Danas were rated as “quite positive”, as well as the texts of Politika, Blic and Vecernje Novosti, which “respected the rules in most of the cases”. “There are no ‘tools’ in the society, no rules to control that. The Code alone cannot solve these problems. Here, the principle that everything is allowed has been nurtured. There is no decency here. Certain political and other groups encourage journalists to break the rules of profession by publishing allegedly ‘authenticated’ information”, said Janjic. The legal representative of NUNS, Vladan Simeunovic, said that the violation of human rights was constantly present in the Serbian press, “particularly impeaching people before the lawsuit had even begun”. According to Simeunovic, the press is also full of damages to reputation: “It is indeed a socially dangerous behavior, but our state authorities incline towards decriminalization of libel and defamation. I represent journalists and have always been against prosecution of journalists in criminal or damage compensation suits. If someone is to be brought to court, then it certainly must be the publishers”, Simeunovic pointed.