Information

The largest local media players received hundreds of millions in budget funds again this year. Radoica "Maša" Milosavljević, companies linked to Defense Minister Bratislav Gašić, Goran Lalić, and former officer Slavko Stijaković fared the best. For Vidosav Radomirović, whose media outlets began covering the protests, the amount was drastically reduced.

The City Municipality of Lazarevac will not announce a new competition this year following the suspension of the competitive procedure, as the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government has issued an opinion that city municipalities are not units of local self-government and are not obligated to announce a competition for co-financing media projects under the Law on Public Information and Media, according to the response from the Administration of the City Municipality of Lazarevac to the inquiry from the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) regarding whether a new competition will be announced in 2025.

The City of Čačak has announced the second call for project co-financing of media content for the year 2025, as the allocated funds in the budget were not fully distributed in the previously announced competition.

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) has published a database with the results of all completed competitions during 2025 for project co-financing of media content, along with a list of organizations that were awarded based on the competitions, which is searchable by project applicants.

In the interest of the public - funding should be allocated through media competitions. However, this is often not the case - the project of the Novi Sad cooperative Medijakult, which won the competition held by the Provincial Secretariat for Information and received nearly 5 million dinars, has reportedly been executed by other companies, according to findings by UNS. This is not in accordance with the law, but it seems that those who provided the funding do not see it. And it is not their money, but rather that of the taxpayers of Vojvodina.

The project of the Novi Sad Cooperative "Medijakult," which received nearly 5 million dinars in last year's competition held by the Provincial Secretariat for Information, was fully realized by other companies, even though the Law on Public Information and Media (ZJIM) does not permit this.

The Municipality of Surdulica adopted today a resolution on the allocation of funds for the competition for project co-financing of media content for 2024, thus finally concluding this process from the previous year. The announcement of the competition for the current year is awaited.

Local governments have been allocating funds to the same media outlets, mostly pro-regime, through project co-financing competitions for years. This year, budgets for media projects have been reduced while more money is being allocated for advertising in the media through public procurement, according to representatives of local media who participated in a training session on writing media projects in Subotica, organized by the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM).

Out of 174 announced competitions for co-financing media content in Serbia, eight local governments have not yet allocated funds intended for the media, while the competition in Surdulica is still ongoing from 2024, and none has been announced for this year, according to an analysis conducted by the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) based on data from the Unified Information System (JIS) of the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications.