Information

The Government of the Republic of Serbia appointed Slavoljub Ristić, the General Secretary of the Professional Association of Journalists of Serbia (PROUNS), as the President of the Board of the Public Institution Film News on March 12 of this year, thus making him a public official.

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) has sent official letters requesting the local governments of Rekovac, Gornji Milanovac, and Doljevac to annul the decisions regarding the appointment of committees for evaluating projects within the competition for co-financing media content, considering that Biljana Ratković Njegovan, who holds a public office, has been selected in all three instances. The letter has also been addressed to the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications, urging the temporary removal of this candidate's name from the Unified Information System (UIS) so that the authorities issuing the competitions cannot reappoint her.

The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) is organizing online consultations on project writing and calls for project co-financing of media content on Thursday, March 26, from 1 PM to 4 PM.

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.

The tenth training session for writing media projects was held at the premises of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) in Belgrade.

To date, 137 local governments, the Vojvodina Secretariat, and the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications have announced competitions for project co-financing of media content for the year 2026.

In the interest of public awareness, the citizens of Vranje have contributed over one and a half million euros in the past decade to finance projects for two media groups – well-known local propaganda outlets. The favoritism shown to these media by the authorities and competition committees is further evidenced by the fact that the media in third place on the top list of the ten "most awarded" in local competitions has received a total amount fifteen times smaller for projects over the last 11 years – approximately 100,000 euros.

In the last eleven years, the municipality of Novi Bečej has allocated almost 50 million dinars of public funds for media projects (49,630,000 dinars from 2015 to 2025).