16. 05. 2011

ROUND TABLE “MEDIA IN SERBIA”

Belgrade, May 16, 2011. (International Radio Serbia) - The draft version of the Media Strategy should be finished by June 1, announced member of the working group for that project Danilo Nikolic, during his participation in the round table discussion "Media in Serbia", organized by the TANJUG news agency.

Danilo Nikolic has stated that the working version of that document will be passed to the Ministry of Culture and Information, after which the public debate should follow. He has pointed that there is no democratic law without the democratic procedure, and added that he hopes this strategy will be a result of an expert and public debate. The media in Serbia are in a difficult position, especially in the economic and market-presence regard. Such position, according to Nikolic, is testified to by the results of the report on the freedom of media, done by American NGO "Freedom House", which puts Serbia in the 72nd position among 196 ranked countries.

Gordana Susa has assessed that the situation in the media has been very bad lately, but certainly not worse than during the totalitarian regime behind us. As an example, she pointed to the situation in Turkey, where the number of murdered and arrested journalists is by far much higher. Susa has assessed that in our country the things will start in the positive direction once the journalists' murders are solved, and she stressed it is devastating that it has not been done already.

President of the Media Association and editor-in-chief of the Blic daily Veselin Simonovic has said that in his opinion, which is also supported by the Association, the Strategy should contain the following: the relation of the state towards the media; the role of the state in the media; and the issue of state ownership in the media. "On one side, we have courts that work they way they do, and everybody is dissatisfied with such situation. On one side the draconic measures against the reporters that make mistakes, while on the other side the punishment is minimal for those who do something to the detriment of the reporters", underlined Dragan Bujosevic, the editor-in-chief of the Politika daily. He has explained that it means the continuation of the "policy that it is easy to threaten the journalists and eliminate them, because nobody will be held responsible". Speaking of the current situation in the media, Bujosevic has said that it is good that in the past ten years we have not seen those kinds of liquidation, which is one of the dramatic differences comparing to "those times". "All those who are oblivious to that fact have no clue where they live, or what they are talking and thinking about", emphasized Bujosevic.

The working group is composed of experts suggested by the Ministry of Culture, media associations and associations of media industry, and has been established on April 18, so it immediately commenced the work on the making of the Media Strategy.