Media and journalist associations sent MIT a proposal for changes to the project co-financing process

Proposals for amending legal acts and specific changes in the process of project co-financing are based on agreed conclusions from internal consultations with members of this year's competition commissions, as well as with representatives of the aforementioned media and journalist associations and the Press Council self-regulatory body.

We hope that these proposals will help to take concrete steps that will eliminate deficiencies in various aspects and reduce abuses at all levels of government and that should improve the process of project co-financing in the coming period.

List of proposals:

Proposals regarding the project co-financing process:

• Introduce a restriction that one candidate cannot participate in more than 5 commissions per year;
• Introduce the rule that one candidate cannot be a member of the same commission at the state, provincial and local self-government levels for two years in a row;
• Improve and make more transparent the evaluation of the process of project co-financing of media content;
• Introduce the obligation to hold a final meeting of all committee members before agreeing on the proposal for the distribution of funds;
• Introduce the obligation for committee members to explain each grade for the received media projects;
• Determine the representativeness of the proposers based on the decisions made in the election process for REM Council members in the context of authorized proposers;
• Harmonize fee rates for commission members, depending on the number of projects to be evaluated, following the example of commissions in the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications;
• With each competition, publish the Analysis of required media content provided by the Law on Public Information and Media.

Proposals regarding the use and functioning of the Unified Information System (JIS) of the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications (MIT):

• Introduce the obligation of MIT to collect objections related to the functioning of JIS, which is a prerequisite for eliminating technical deficiencies before and during the next project cycle;
• Enable the documentation published on JIS to be machine-readable;
• Within JIS, create a database of media projects, which would be searchable by publishers and media at the state, provincial and local level for easier accessibility and greater transparency of the process at all levels of government and insight into the database of all supported projects through project co-financing;
• Within JIS, create a database of committee members at all levels of government that would be searchable by members' names, which would further contribute to the transparency of the project co-financing process.

Proposals regarding the evaluation of candidates for committee members:

• Master's and Doctor of Science degrees should be graded differently;
• Create a larger range of points for work experience, since currently 16 and 40 years of work in the media are scored equally;
• Eliminate the scoring of expert papers and expert meetings, the mention of which in applications during the previous process was subject to abuse and manipulation;
• Scientific works and participation in scientific conferences should be scored with a lower number of points;
• Eliminate the possibility of scoring for writing projects and participating in the realization of projects since they cannot be proven;
• Eliminate the possibility of scoring previous participation of members in project evaluation commissions.

A proposal regarding the evaluation of media projects (which was also supported by the Press Council):

• It should be sanctioned media that have been imposed measures or punishments by REM and the Press Council by assigning negative points, that is, by reducing the total number of points instead of assigning points, which is currently the case.

Association of Independent Electronic Media

Independent Journalists Association of Serbia

Association of Journalists of Serbia

Local Press

Media Association