12. 12. 2011

TWENTY-SEVENTH MONITORING REPORT

The twenty-seventh Monitoring Report contains the results of the legal monitoring of the media scene in Serbia in October 2011.

According to the findings and assessment of the monitoring team, the most important event in the media sector is the adoption of the Media Strategy after two years of work on this document. As it was officially published in October, the authors analyze its solutions in the Report, while suggesting possible problems in its implementation and their causes in the Conclusion.

The fact that the Media Strategy was adopted did not have an effect to the improvement of the media situation in Serbia. Its implementation is still pending, whereas long-standing problems in the media sector were still present in this period.

Physical attacks on journalists, threats and a request for disclosure of sources of information, stoning of media premises and destroying of vehicles, indictment without investigation, endless court proceedings in cases in which journalists were exposed to attacks - these were just some of the examples of violation of freedom of expression, dealt by the authors of the Report. According to the monitoring team, some of these cases are just the evidence that pressures on the media and attempts of their execution are increasingly stronger in anticipation of calling the parliamentary and local elections, while some again point to a serious problem that the media and journalists have with the court practice in the media cases.

Cases of violation of freedom of expression analyzed in this Report, as in all previous ones, show that, there is a significant problem with the implementation of the Public Information Law, not because of its ill solutions, rather due of a lack of will of the competent authorities to implement it consistently. Not even the Broadcasting Law has been implemented in part related to the financing of public service broadcasting from TV fees. To what extent the solutions provided in the Media Strategy, related to this question in particular, symbolize an improvement compared to the current situation and what is good in this document that relates to the financing of public services - can be found in the Report, in the part dealing with the monitoring of implementation of existing laws. Broadcasting Law and its implementation was also analyzed by the expert team in some other cases - broadcasting "piracy" and political advertising in the media. The authors dealt with the implementation of the Law on National Councils of National Minorities too, which again demonstrated its shortcomings in practice, particularly in those provisions relevant to the media.

In this period, there were no new laws of importance to the media.

Activities of the relevant regulatory bodies in the broadcasting sector in this period have not significantly affected the improvement of the media situation, while the Press Council, a self-regulatory body of the print media, has shown concrete results in its work - the first two decisions of the Appeal Commission brought in cases of appeals made to the work of certain media. The achievement of the desired goal - to reduce the number of lawsuits against print media and their journalists - will depend on the way in which the decisions of the Commission will be treated by the courts in their proceedings, the authors suggest. In the part of the Report dealing with monitoring of the work of competent authorities, particularly interesting is the analysis of the rules on state aid control, which are very important to the media sector and whose application has been proclaimed by the Media Strategy, but which no one in the competent ministry has even started to deal with.

The process of digitalization - This part of the Report provides information about the changes that are now more likely to happen and what are the reasons for that.

The privatization process - Monitoring the situation and analyzing ill-effects of the latest developments in the "Novosti" case, the monitoring team indicates the fact that the state will continue to not only participate in the ownership of media, but practically manage the media company, contrary to the imperative provision of the Public Information Law, which casts a shadow on the sincerity and commitment of the Strategy's preference regarding the withdrawal of the state from the media.

The Twenty-seventh Monitoring Report was prepared by the expert team of the law office "Zivkovic&Samardzic", in cooperation with ANEM. Here you can download the Report in whole or in part, 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