MEDIA SCENE OF SERBIA IN FEBRUARY 2025

The monitoring of the media scene for February 2025 provides an overview of the key findings from the Freedom House annual report "The Uphill Battle to Safeguard Rights", monitoring reports prepared for the Media Freedom Rapid Response network by experts from the European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Press Institute (IPI) and the Reporters Without Borders report "Analysis of the State of Media Freedom".

Readers can be informed about the response of the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office regarding three cases of endangering the safety of journalists (the cases were recorded on the Platform of the Council of Europe for the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists), as well as about the reaction of the International PEN Center to the issue of endangering journalists in Serbia.

The topics of illegal access to data stored in mobile phones and the installation of spyware are also monitored. There is also story about the decision of more than 25 civil society organizations and a number of journalist and media associations to end cooperation with the legislative and executive authorities in Serbia, a decision to which the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) joined, freezing its status in the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists (PWG).

Special monitoring topics include the intrusion of a large number of armed members of the criminal police into the premises of several citizens' associations, the situation in the media reporting in the Serbian language in Kosovo and Metohija, the threats and pressures to which the journalist N1 Ksenija Pavkov and the editorial offices of the media Zrenjanin and Nova ekonomija were exposed; insults and threats addressed to journalists Nenad Kulačin, Ana Lalić Hegediš and Dinko Gruhonjić and a break-in at the premises of the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina (NDNV).

The February monitoring also considers the action of the REM Council, i.e. the reaction of this state body to the application submitted by NUNS in August 2024 due to the way TV Pink reported on Tamara Skrozza's statement, and REM's flexible interpretation of the time for publishing the report on the course of the 2023 election campaign. The reaction of the relevant journalist associations and media associations to the problems they encountered while using the Unified Information Platform (JIS) was also not left out.

This monitoring also does not lack a section concerning SLAPP lawsuits. The KRIK portal newsroom received a verdict of the Court of Appeal in Belgrade, which confirms the verdict of the High Court, according to which the editor-in-chief Stevan Dojčinović, the journalist Milica Vojinović and the publisher of KRIK are obliged to pay Bratislav Gašić, the Minister of Defense of the Government of the Republic of Serbia in a technical mandate, who at the time of the publication of the text was the director of the state Security Agency, in the amount of 70,000 dinars in the name of compensation for non-material damages due to injury to honor and reputation. Journalists filed a Constitutional Appeal and Revision against that verdict.

You can read about all that in the Monitoring of the media scene in Serbia for February 2025.

This publication was published with the financial support of the European Union and Norway and the Balkan Fund for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the USA. The Association of Independent Electronic Media is solely responsible for its content, and that content does not necessarily express the official views of the European Union, the Government of Norway, the German Marshall Fund and the Balkan Fund for Democracy.

This Monitoring Report was prepared by expert monitoring team from the law office "Savović" in cooperation with ANEM.