Kruna Savović: Misogyny, Everyday Life

The current situation regarding journalist safety in Serbia is dramatic. Journalists have become targets not only of verbal attacks and threats but also of physical assaults – both from the police and from groups hired by the regime to beat dissenters.

Attorney Kruna Savović is one of the leading legal experts in the field of media law and journalist protection in Serbia. As a long-time associate of the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia (NUNS), she has represented numerous media outlets and journalists in cases of threats, pressures, and SLAPP lawsuits. She actively participates in the preparation and improvement of media legislation, as well as in programs aimed at educating and strengthening the capacities of editorial offices concerning legal and digital safety. Her experience and engagement make her one of the most relevant interlocutors on the topic of journalist safety, particularly for female journalists, in the contemporary media environment.

“VREME”: Today, even the semblance that the government, through various initiatives, is working to protect journalists has disappeared. What does legal protection for journalists in Serbia look like today – what has happened to the laws and existing protection mechanisms?

KRUNA SAVOVIĆ: You put it well: the semblance has been lost. And when the semblance disappears, only the essence remains, and that is well known to both journalists and us who defend their rights and freedom of speech. Journalists today are more endangered than yesterday, but the way they are endangered today was evident even yesterday. They are a constant target because the truth hurts when it is heard. Hence the verbal and physical assaults against them. Journalistic associations strive to help as much as they can, journalists do their best to work without fear, but the laws and existing protection mechanisms, which are in the hands of the state, are hardly applied, or are applied in a way that ensures the semblance of a hypocritical stance – that institutions are doing their job. And very often, there is not even an application to maintain that semblance. We witness that media workers endure violence even from police officers who are not sanctioned for abusing their powers.

Female journalists are particularly exposed to misogynistic insults and threats of sexual violence, and they are attacked in the field more often than their male colleagues. How has the safety of female journalists become increasingly endangered?

Female journalists are constantly exposed to misogyny. This problem is old and ready to change its appearance. In a time when the journalistic profession is high-risk, it is certainly more difficult for those who already face various challenges and pressures. We are fortunate to have many women in editorial offices, and they are brave. Some of them we regularly see reporting from the streets across Serbian cities, while others engage in investigative journalism. Female journalists are an easier "target" than their colleagues because those who are ready to attack do not know where strength lies due to their weakness.

What is the status of criminal complaints regarding attacks on female and male journalists in the past few months? How willing are the police, prosecutors, and courts – in the deep political crisis that Serbia has been experiencing for nine months – to respond effectively and quickly to threats and attacks?

Handling criminal complaints today is like swimming freestyle. I will correct myself, not entirely freely, because freedom is limited by the interest with which the handling is approached. So, if someone has recorded, seen, or documented in some way a truth that cannot be seen, those complaints are not handled effectively because there is no interest in acting, or there is an interest in not acting.

The impression is that the fragile trust between the signatories of the Agreement on the establishment of the Permanent Working Group for Journalist Safety – media and journalistic associations, the Ministry of the Interior – and the Prosecutor's Office has been irrevocably damaged. What consequences might this have once the political crisis passes?

Once the crisis passes, institutions will do their job. While institutions do not do their job, the crisis continues. Once they take up their duties, there will be neither space nor need for someone else to do it instead of them. For now, in a sea of almost private interests, within those institutions, some honest people and good experts swim for the respect of the law and the common good.

In conclusion, what three key things could the state, media associations, and journalists themselves do to improve safety, especially the safety of female journalists, during the political crisis and ongoing unrest?

I wish I could list three key things that institutions, media associations, and journalists could do regarding safety, as that would mean they are, as it should be, on the same side. Given that, unfortunately, our case is not such, my recommendation to journalistic associations is to do everything they do even better, and to female and male journalists to stay safe – such are the times.

Source: Vreme