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28. 09. 2012

THIRTY-SIXTH MONITORING REPORT

August 2012 - Serbian media scene

Based on legal monitoring conducted during this period, in the Conclusion of his Thirty-sixth Monitoring Report, the monitoring team emphasizes the need for urgent changes in the media sector. Otherwise, it might happen that there would be no media left in Serbia, both electronic and print. The monitoring team has based this assessment on the following findings:

In this period too, media and journalists were the targets of various attacks and pressures, which indicates an unsatisfactory level of exercising of freedom of expression and media freedom. The authors of the Report analyze three cases - a series of statements of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the leading party of the ruling coalition, which continuously accused media of lies, untruths, fabrications, falsification of reality, obedience and support to the former regime; physical attack on a TV crew while reporting from a public event; insults and threats of a MP addressed to a journalist for his text that was in no way referring to the said politician or related to his work, but indirectly with his wife. All three cases have or can have significant ill-effects, not only on the work of journalists and specific media, but on journalistic work and functioning of the media in Serbia in general, as indicated in the part of the Monitoring Report relating to freedom of expression. In the same part of the Report, the authors analyze the three court proceedings - the first, resulting in President pardoning a journalist and pointing to the need for decriminalization of defamation and insult; the other, as an example of good practice of courts in media cases, particularly the Court of Appeals in Belgrade, which has recently raised standards in protecting freedom of expression in the country with its decisions and which is related to the journalists' liability for damages for breaching the honor and reputation by publication of information; the third proceeding is an example of bad practice of courts in media cases, indicating that our courts are still making no difference between the value judgment and factual statement, which is why the media professionals continue to suffer.

The problem of lack of transparency of media ownership in Serbia was present even in this period. The authors of the Report deal with this issue in part monitoring of the implementation of existing laws, regarding the case of an Internet portal conveying a photo originally published on a Twitter account. In this regard, the authors analyze the effect of the few remaining provisions of the contentious Law on Amendments to the Public Information Law from 2009, not declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, but which concern the issue of transparency of media ownership. The subject of analysis was also the implementation of the Broadcasting Law, namely the competence of regulatory bodies - RBA and Ratel, in terms of regulation/sanctioning of differences in the sound levels between different parts of the programs, on the occasion of frequent complaints of citizens filed with RBA over too loud commercials on TV. In this part of the Report, the team also analyzed the implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection and other relevant legislations, on the occasion of a concrete case, but also the practice of some media, to publish information that enabled identification of juvenile victims of crime and thus causing them and their families additional suffering.

Media regulation is still not in the focus of the new government, so no legislation of importance to the media was adopted, or put to public debate. Therefore, in the part of the Report about the adoption of new laws, the authors deal with the emergence of a media contemplating on future solutions to some issues important for the media sector, related to media regulations, such as the issue of TV subscription fee and financing of public services, or the establishment of regional public services. The authors of the Report point here to the harmful effects that such incompetent debates might have on issues with such importance for the media sector.

The results of monitoring of the work of authorities indicated that their activities had not contributed to the improvement of the media situation in this period as well. In this part of the Report, the authors write about the appointment of the assistant minister of culture and media and the reasons for his appointment to this position, which had sparked controversy in public; new call by RBA for issuance of broadcasting licenses, but also about a large number of media, whose licenses were either revoked in the last 5 months or were in the process of revocation for nonpayment of license fees, by analyzing to what extent has the Broadcasting Law itself led to such situation; new negotiations which OFPS, together with the organization PI, is leading with different users of protected subjects in order to reach an agreement on the tariffs.

There has been no progress either in the area of digitalization of media in this period, except that the new state secretary in the competent ministry, apart from sharing his predecessor's optimism, is now openly talking about what the state has yet to do and what it has not done, but needed to do long time ago. This may be an indication of some changes in attitude of the authorities towards this issue.

However, the completion of the process of privatization of the media still remains an issue that the new authorities are silent about, while journalists and their unions see the solution to this difficult situation in the media sector only in the invalidation of privatization, i.e. putting privatized media back on the state budget. In this period, they found the excuse for such stands in yet another case of closedown of a privatized media. The authors write about this in the part of the Report dealing with the process of privatization, suggest at that why such opinions are wrong and what the demands should really be in order to truly be in the interest of the media.

The Thirty-sixth Monitoring Report was prepared by the expert team of the law office "Zivkovic&Samardzic", in cooperation with ANEM. It can be downloaded here, in whole or in parts, by clicking on the selected section below.