SERBIA'S MEDIA SCENE IN MAY 2024
The monitoring of the media scene for May brings an overview of key events concerning the threat to freedom of expression and the fight for it, the adoption of the regulations of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), the non-announcement of tenders at the level of local self-government units, the publication of the decision on the formation of commissions for tenders in the field of public information.
The monitoring also brings insight into the efforts to organize a response to the increase in pressure exerted on journalists by filing SLAPP proceedings, but also the key points of the report "World Press Freedom Index for 2024 - Journalism under Political Pressure", prepared by the organization Reporters Without Borders.
In May, there was a physical attack on Vuk Cvijić, a journalist from the weekly Radar, in the center of Belgrade. IN Media was exposed to pressure this month as well. The bank documents of the Ozon Press media were published without authorization in the tabloid media. The Serbian Progressive Party in Novi Sad published a statement with numerous insults against Dinko Gruhonjić, journalist and program director of the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina. Special attention was paid to all those events in monitoring.
The reader can also be informed about the events reported by the KRIK portal, which concern the lawsuits filed by the judge of the Court of Appeal in Belgrade and her husband against the journalists of that newsroom. Lawsuits were filed due to the data presented in the "Judge who Judges" database, which the journalists of the KRIK portal have been successfully managing since 2020. In the criminal complaint filed for the alleged commission of the criminal offense Unauthorized collection of personal data, it was requested that Bojana Pavlović and Stevan Dojčinović, KRIK journalist and editor-in-chief, be sentenced to ten months in prison each, as well as a security measure - a ban on doing journalistic work for a period of two years each.
In the May monitoring, another case was dealt with in which it was demanded that the journalist be punished with a prison sentence. We are talking about Snežana Đurić, a journalist from the Pištaljka media, against whom the general secretary of the Serbian Rowing Federation filed a private criminal complaint for the alleged commission of the criminal offense Unauthorized publication and display of other people's files, portraits and videos. The lawsuit proposed the imposition of a prison sentence of two years.
Media monitoring was published with the financial support of the European Union. 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.
This Monitoring Report was prepared by expert monitoring team from the law office "Savović" in cooperation with ANEM, and the entire report can be found at this link.
