SERBIA'S MEDIA SCENE IN DECEMBER 2023
ANEM monitoring report for December 2023 on freedom of expression, old and new regulations and analysis of SLAPP lawsuits
Monitoring of the media scene is carried out with the aim of continuous monitoring of events and processes that affect the state of media freedom in the Republic of Serbia. The authors of the monitoring deal with: freedom of expression; monitoring the implementation of existing regulations; by adopting new regulations, but also by amending and supplementing the current ones, both from the field of media, and from other areas that directly or indirectly affect the freedom of the media; as well as by analyzing SLAPP lawsuits (strategic lawsuits against public participation) directed against journalists and media.
Freedom of expression
According to the database of pressures and attacks on journalists maintained by the Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS), in the first 11 months of this year, a total of 111 cases of violation of the rights of journalists were recorded, one less than in the same period last year, of which the most common type of violation was pressures, which were twice as much as last year. A member of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists, Veran Matić, stated at a press conference the statistics of the State Prosecutor's Office from the beginning of the year to November, indicating the trend of more convictions than in the previous period, when there were usually around 25 percent of court-solved cases. The report for the month of December deals in more detail with the case of Dušan Čavić, activist and author of the show Marka Žvaka, the case of Isidora Kovačević, chief and responsible editor of the Podrinske media, the case of Žaklina Tatalović, journalist of N1, the case of Vojin Radovanović, journalist of the daily newspaper Danas, the case of Mladen Savatović, journalist of N1, the case of Uglješa Bokić, a journalist from Cenzolovka, as well as the case of Dušan Mlađenović, a journalist from N1. The aforementioned negative events and dangerous situations at the protests in which journalists found themselves were the reason for organizing a meeting between representatives of the police and representatives of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists.
Monitoring the process of adopting new laws
Considering that the media laws were recently adopted, the process of monitoring their application in practice is still current. The month of December was marked by the snap elections held, so the impressions about compliance with the legal provisions concerning official campaigns have been summarized. The case of politician Đorđe Miketić was highlighted as an example of gross violation of provisions on privacy protection. The current topics are the absence of REM's reaction, as well as the election of the new REM Council and whether the agreed deadline of one year will be respected. The legal provision that caused a stormy reaction from the critical public is still disputed, and it refers to the media indirectly owned by the state, as well as the possibilities of abuse and unfair competition that such a solution can cause. The report states that SBB formed a new basic list of TV channels, that a new president of REM was elected, and REM's obligations regarding the monitoring process and reporting on program supervision during the election campaign were analyzed, in accordance with the new legal solutions.
Implementation of existing regulations
The new Law on Public Information and Media, which entered into force on November 4, 2023, prescribes new obligations in connection with the announcement of tenders for project co-financing of the production of media content, so that the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, information and relations with religious communities, as well as local self-governments, are obliged to announce tenders by the first of March of the current year. It is also a novelty that for the first time penalties have been defined for those who do not comply with the legal provisions. Thus, if the competent authorities do not announce tenders in the first two months of the current year, or cancel them and do not announce new ones within 30 days, they will commit a misdemeanor for which the legislator has provided a penalty for the responsible person in the range of 50,000 to 150,000 dinars. When evaluating media projects, data will also be taken into account, whether in the year preceding the year of application a measure was issued by the regulatory body in the case of electronic media (REM), or an act of the self-regulatory body of the Press Council was adopted - for printed and online media which found that the media violated legal provisions, that is, ethical standards. The report describes the new legal solutions in more detail.
SLAPP lawsuits directed at journalists and the media
A case was analyzed in which the first-instance verdict of the High Court in Belgrade rejected the claim of Serbian businessman Bogoljub Karić, who filed a lawsuit against KRIK journalists for publishing information regarding the plaintiff (Karić), his business in Belarus and ties with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka. According to the court's opinion, KRIK journalists performed their journalistic work with due care and did not harm the Serbian businessman as he claimed in the lawsuit, but the article presented "true facts that were not disputed during the proceedings." At the end of December, the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation published a guide called "SLAPP Lawsuits in Brief" which explains the phenomenon of unfounded accusations through SLAPP lawsuits and which contains the most important information about the legal and other characteristics of this mechanism of intimidation of the media, individuals and organizations because of their work in the public interest. This guide, authored by Ana Zdravković, aims to point out the basic characteristics of SLAPP, how to recognize it and what to do in case you find yourself as a defendant in a proceeding of this type, and it is analyzed in more detail in the monitoring report for the month of December.
Media monitoring was published with the financial support of the European Union and the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications. The Association of Independent Electronic Media is solely responsible for its content, and that content in no way expresses the official views of the European Union and the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications.
This Monitoring Report was prepared by ANEM's expert monitoring team from the law office "Živković & Samardžić" in cooperation with ANEM, and the entire report can be found at this link.
