Information

Project co-financing of media content in Serbia has become a meaningless process in which funds are allocated only to a limited number of media outlets and non-governmental organizations. Participants in a two-day discussion on project co-financing of media, organized by the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), agreed that the members of the committees evaluating projects lack sufficient expertise and that the system for scoring media professionals is inadequate. Representatives from 40 local media outlets participated in the discussion.

The Ministry of Information and Telecommunications (MIT) confirmed today to the Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) that as soon as it determined that the candidates for members of the commissions for the evaluation of media projects, Slavoljub Ristić and Biljana Ratković Njegovan, had become public officials, it blocked the possibility for them to be elected to the commissions.

Pro-government media outlets such as Informer, Srpski Telegraf, Alo, Kurir, and Večernje Novosti, along with their associated portals, have received over 2.8 million euros for media projects from local governments, the Ministry of Information, and the Provincial Secretariat during a decade of project co-financing, according to research by Cenzolovka. More than half of this amount came from the budget of the City of Belgrade—approximately 1.5 million euros. With the funds that the City generously allocated to these tabloids, it could have provided 680,000 meals for users of the Soup Kitchen, purchased around thirty ambulances, acquired eight mammography machines, or built a small kindergarten.

In the 94 commissions established to evaluate media projects to date, only 43 different candidates have been selected, according to an analysis by the Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS).

So far, 141 local government, the Vojvodina Secretariat, and the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications have announced competitions for project co-financing of media content for the year 2026.

When, in 2015, following the adoption of a set of media laws, the then President of the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia, Vukašin Obradović, spoke about the pillars of project co-financing – public interest and strict control over the spending of funds – expectations were high. In theory, the system was supposed to ensure that public money went to the highest quality media projects, primarily investigative ones, while control mechanisms would guarantee the legality and purposefulness of the expenditures.

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) has established a database of the results of the competition for project co-financing of media content for the year 2026, as well as a registry that allows tracking which candidates for project evaluation committees have been selected at which levels and in how many committees.

In nearly two-thirds, or 17 out of 29 commissions formed to date for the evaluation of media projects, all selected members have achieved the maximum score of one hundred points, and most of them come from pro-government journalistic and media organizations, according to a study by UNS.

The representative of the Professional Association of Journalists of Serbia (PROUNS), Slavoljub Ristić, and the representative of the Journalists' Society of Vojvodina (DNV), Biljana Ratković Njegovan, have been replaced by other members in the committees for evaluating media projects in Svrljig and Dimitrovgrad, as well as in Rekovac and Gornji Milanovac, due to a conflict of interest, UNS has learned.