Who reports on student protests does not receive funding: Project co-financing at the local level is primarily directed to regime media.

The editor of OzonPress, Stojan Marković, reminds us that Čačak was one of the first cities in Serbia to have a regulation on co-financing media content through competitions.

“It has long ceased to be what it should be and does not reflect funding and care for the public interest at all; rather, the entire process and allocation of funds have been reduced to financing regime media at the local level and media that are favorable to the local authorities embodied in the Serbian Progressive Party. Thus, it has all lost its meaning. If we say that media should take care of the public interest, in the city of Čačak, this public interest is not funded from the city budget,” notes Marković.

Dragana Matović, the editor-in-chief of the CEMA Forum portal, also emphasizes that the situation in Čačak is currently such that funds are allocated exclusively to regime media.

“Media that truly report objectively no longer receive any funds from the city budget,” explains Matović.

Journalist and editor of the Epicentar press portal from Čačak, Milena Gavrilović, adds that project co-financing for media has become corrupt.

“We have applied every year for the past ten years and received minimal amounts – 100,000, 200,000, up to a maximum of 300,000 dinars in one year. Most of these were projects related to youth, new technologies, digital security, projects that did not touch on politics but were certainly educational. This year we applied, but given our independent portal and our reporting on all events, especially student protests, for the first time in the last ten years, we did not receive any funding. We did not receive an explanation,” she emphasized.

Gavrilović also notes that this year's application process was very confusing, considering that they applied for the first time through the JIS system.

“We encountered many technical problems, which many media are familiar with. As far as our experience goes, it hasn't been great; the amounts in recent years have been really minimal and I can say humiliating. So, as far as local co-financing is concerned, we cannot live off it, and it certainly does not provide satisfaction for further work,” assesses the editor of Epicentar.

The situation is similar in Ivanjica, says Mirjana Bratuljević from Ivanjički Radio. According to her, when we talk about project co-financing for media, a similar practice has been implemented for a number of years.

“Local media that receive funds are largely budget users; the same applies to assembly broadcasts. It also happens that media from other cities and municipalities often receive funds from the citizens of Ivanjica and then you cannot see those same media in Ivanjica even two or three times, let alone have them fulfill what is expected of them,” claims Bratuljević.

The interlocutors were participants in the ninth out of ten training sessions for writing media projects for local media, organized by ANEM, planned this year in cities throughout Serbia.

The workshop, led by Ilir Gaši, was intended for local media to acquire concrete knowledge about writing projects of public interest, in accordance with the Law on Public Information and Media, as well as projects from international organizations.

Representatives from media in Čačak, Požega, Ivanjica, Kraljevo, and Valjevo attended the training. The training was also an opportunity to exchange experiences regarding participation in this year’s project co-financing process, specifically the competitions announced by the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications and local government authorities.

The training was organized as part of the project of the Association of Independent Electronic Media titled “Participatory Monitoring of the Implementation of the Project Co-Financing Process,” which is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the MATRA program. ANEM is solely responsible for the content of the workshop, which does not necessarily reflect the official views of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.