Information

After the A1 portal pointed out irregularities in the competition announced by the Municipality of Sjenica in April of this year – which was intended exclusively for television stations – the local authorities retracted the previous decision and announced a new public competition, this time open to all public information services.

From the 80,750,000 dinars allocated by the City of Niš for co-financing media content production projects, 29 projects received a total of 54,170,000 dinars, with the largest share (24 million) going to RTV *Zona plus*, owned by the youngest son of Defense Minister Bratislav Gašić. While in previous years, media outlets owned by Vidosav Vitko Radomirović received the most funding, this time none of the media from his empire received a single dinar. Notably, the portal *Niška inicijativa*, run by Srđan Nonić, made its debut among the recipients with 590,000 dinars.

The media with floral-folkloric names (kilim, ramonda, daffodil, and lilac) owned or co-owned by Slavko Stijaković have already received nearly 209,000 euros from the Ministry alone. And the funds from local competitions are yet to arrive!

Based on the proposal of the Commission, the Municipal Council of the Municipality of Dimitrovgrad has allocated funds from the budget designated for media projects. As in previous years, the largest portion of the funds went to media outlets owned by the Kruševac businessman Radoica Milosavljević, who is closely associated with the ruling Serbian Progressive Party – two media outlets under his ownership received 11.1 million dinars out of a total of 13.8 million, which is approximately 80%.

The presentation of the Draft Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Public Information and Media and the Law on Electronic Media cannot replace the legally mandated public discussion regarding the mentioned legal acts. This statement was made by Saša Mirković, a representative of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), during a meeting at the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications, where he detailed the Association's position regarding the current procedure for amending these laws.

Media expert Branimir Grulović has been selected as a member of the committee for evaluating media projects in 44 local governments out of 87 decision-making bodies established so far for project evaluation, as reported by the Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS) based on insights from the Unified Information System (JIS).

Starting today and in the coming days, the Vranje News portal will analyze the media competitions of the City of Vranje and the Ministry of Information, with an emphasis on how the media from Vranje, as well as from other cities that received funds from the citizens of Vranje through the city budget, fared in these competitions. The initial article pertains to how the projects of several media outlets owned by Zoran Zuja Veličković were evaluated in the competitions.

The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) believes that the decision of the municipality of Sjenica to limit this year's competitions for co-financing media content exclusively to television broadcasters and media in the languages of national minorities constitutes discrimination against other media.

The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) expresses serious concern regarding the decision of the City of Novi Pazar to allocate the majority of funds this year in the competition for co-financing public interest in the field of public information to Radio Television Novi Pazar, thereby continuing the years-long practice of selective and unjustified distribution of funds to a single media outlet.