ANEM: Reassess the criteria of the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications in the candidate scoring process for members of competition committees for project co-financing.
The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) points out numerous inconsistencies in the final ranking list of candidates from the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications for members of the selection committees for co-financing projects in the field of public information.
The fact that the biographies of six representatives of the Association of Journalists of Vojvodina scored between 92 and a maximum of 100 points is hard to comprehend, especially considering the inactivity of the aforementioned association, which does not even possess a website. The apparent favoritism of the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications, which oversaw the scoring process, is difficult to explain, as evidenced by the case of the Union of Associations "Association of Radio and Television of Serbia," whose candidates secured top positions on the list despite their activities being unknown to both experts and the general public.
It is indicative that the current Assistant Minister in the Sector for Information and Media, Dragan Traparić, was, prior to his appointment to this position, a representative of the aforementioned Association of Journalists of Vojvodina in the Working Group for Amendments to the Law on Public Media Services, while simultaneously serving as the Assistant Provincial Secretary for Culture, Public Information, and Relations with Religious Communities, responsible for public information, media, and analytics. This Working Group was formed last autumn by the interim Minister Dejan Ristić, who insists on the argument that there are as many as 76 registered associations, most of which are active only during the project allocation of budget funds at all levels of government.
The final ranking list of candidates for the competition commissions is in direct conflict with the self-praise of representatives from the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications regarding increased democracy, participation, and transparency in the future evaluation process and selection of the best projects within the public information sector competitions.
On the contrary, this final list is clear evidence of the justified criticisms regarding the recent problematic amendment to the regulations on project co-financing and the implementation of illogical scoring policies, which have already been pointed out to the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications by ANEM and other reputable journalistic and media associations.
The open favoritism of certain journalistic associations, groups, and self-proclaimed experts through undisguised scoring engineering, along with the visible marginalization of genuinely independent and autonomous candidates as well as representatives of organizations that maintain a critical stance toward the authorities, is a clear indicator of the direction in which the decision-making process regarding the allocation of funds for project co-financing will proceed.
In light of all this, it is clear that it is necessary to amend the regulations on project co-financing, which involves a redefinition of the scoring policy for submitted applications, as this is a prerequisite for the establishment of genuinely independent commissions that will decide on the allocation of funds for project co-financing at the national, provincial, and local levels.
Association of Independent Electronic Media ANEM
