News

Former employees of B92 are sharing a video on social media in which they condemn the threats received by Veran Matić, the president of the Managing Board of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) and a member of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists, accompanied by the message "Veran Matić is not alone."

The National Working Group for the Fight Against SLAPP expresses serious concern regarding the private criminal lawsuit filed by the company "Millennium Team" against N1 journalist Maja Nikolić, seeking a prison sentence of up to one year for what they claim in the lawsuit to be the criminal offense of damaging business reputation and creditworthiness related to an article about the purchase of the "Jugoslavija" hotel and state subsidies.

"I perceive the threats from the Center for Social Stability as death threats," says Veran Matić, the president of the Board of Directors of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), in an interview with Danas.

The system of project co-financing for media content, which is intended to ensure media pluralism and the production of content in the public interest, has, in practice, become one of the most controversial mechanisms for distributing public funds in Serbia over the past few years. Instead of supporting professional journalism, numerous competitions increasingly end up as a model of political allocation of funds, where the fate of hundreds of millions of dinars is decided by a small group of people who appear year after year in dozens of competition committees across the country.

For months, the authorities have been attacking Veran Matić, and the latest overt threat to his life came from the favorite child of the regime - the Center for Social Stability, stating: "If any of you see Veran Matić in the next month or two, tell him he is not the only (pseudo) journalist who has grown a beard and to be a little more patient; the continuation is coming soon."

During the past month, the Center for Social Stability, a non-governmental organization known for targeting independent journalists, has intensified its ongoing smear campaign against Veran Matic, the president of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) and a member of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) strongly condemns these shameful attacks and calls on the Serbian authorities to respond swiftly by initiating an investigation into the Center for Social Stability.

Are they listening to you? Don't worry – they are listening. Are they collecting your personal data? Of course they are. Are they monitoring you? Quite possibly. Do they threaten you? If you want to know what it's like to feel this firsthand, ask Veran Matić.

The Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) is concerned about the threatening and alarming statement made by the Center for Social Stability regarding Veran Matić. It calls for the Ministry of Interior to conduct a security assessment of Matić and provide him with police protection, and for the Prosecutor's Office to urgently carry out an investigation.

Written by: Branko Čečen

More than one-third of journalists have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, or believe they have one even though they have not sought help, which is twice the rate of the general population in Serbia. The percentages of anxiety (72.1%), depression (40.4%), panic attacks (31.7%), and PTSD (19.2%) are shocking. More than 81 percent of journalists have experienced burnout at least once due to work, according to a study by the OSCE.