22. 10. 2010

THE FIFTEENTH MONITORING REPORT

Results of the legal monitoring of the Serbian media scene, conducted in September 2010, are presented in the Fifteenth Monitoring Report.

The Report shows that during this period, the media scene in Serbia was particularly marked with: a) a series of round tables dedicated to drafting the Media Strategy and b) further attacks and pressures on journalists and the media, especially local ones, whose continuance has been contributed by unchanged legal practice in media cases.

a) The section of the Report, titled Monitoring of the adoption of new laws, deals with launched process of creating the Media Strategy in Serbia. In addition to an overview of the five round tables dedicated to drafting the Media Strategy, held in September in Belgrade, the monitoring team also provided the review of basic principles and specific proposals for strategic regulation of the most important media issues offered by media and journalists' associations, those who actively participated in these events, but also the stands of one media association that decided not to take part in the process.

b) Several cases, presented in the section of the Report dealing with freedom of expression, show that the freedom of the media and the public's right to know about everything that is of public interest, especially in the inner parts of Serbia, remain limited to personal interests or personal judgment of the authorities and certain interest groups regarding what the public needs to know and how much it needs to know. Particularly worrisome are the decisions of the competent courts in proceedings instituted on the occasion of physical attacks on journalists, which, as is evident in the Report, continued to bring the verdicts on the limit of the legally prescribed minimum or even below it, thus contributing to legal uncertainty and self-censorship of media professionals.

c) In the section of monitoring of the implementation of existing laws, the authors team elaborates the case of infringement of the provisions of Law on Public Information made by certain media, which is, at the same time, the drastic violation of the personal right to privacy with the possible serious criminal  consequences. Regarding the court proceedings initiated before the Constitutional Court, the authors especially deal with the Law on Electronic Communications as it, although generally good for the media sector, has also the provisions whose application may questioned some essential human rights and media freedoms, too.

d) Monitoring of the work of authorities, in the part relating to regulatory bodies, points to the need of urgent amending of the Broadcasting Law, which, due to outdated solutions among other things, does not provide the RBA with a sufficient measure of flexibility in the regulation of cable distribution of the program, and can be a problem in the process of digitalization of terrestrial broadcasting, as RATEL pointed out. According to the analysis and evaluation of team of authors, the activities of the Ministry of Culture in the process of drafting the Media Strategy demonstrated its lack of readiness and ability to deal with all the challenges of this process, which can be bad for the media sector as well. The activities of collective organization OFPS show that the implementation of the new Law on Copyright and Related Rights runs smoothly in all other segments except the one most important for the media - in the area of determining tariffs - due to still present problem of failure to appoint the competent Commission.

e) In the area of digitalization and the privatization, even in this period, the authorities made no significant progress. The monitoring team has therefore presented requests and stands of media and journalists' associations on these media issues, laid down in the September round table discussions, or provided as a contribution to further work on Media strategy.

f) The Conclusion of the Report points out the importance of proper and careful definition of the Media Strategy for the future development of the media sector, but also the seriousness of the problem of growing self-censorship in the media and its causes.

The Fifteenth Monitoring Report, developed in cooperation of the expert team law office "Zivkovic&Samardzic" and ANEM, is available here in its whole or in parts. You can download it by clicking on the selected section below.

Section FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION here
Section MONITORING OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EXISTING LAWS here
Section MONITORING OF ADOPTION OF NEW LAWS here
Section MONITORING OF THE ACTIVITIES OF REGULATORY BODIES, AUTHORITIES AND COLLECTIVE ORGANIZATIONS here
Section MONITORING OF THE DIGITALIZATION AND PRIVATIZATION PROCESSES here
Section OVERALL CONCLUSION here
The COMPLETE REPORT can be downloaded here