Mirković: It is expected that Jan Bratu, the OSCE representative for media freedom, will be involved in the process of selecting candidates for the REM Council.
The process of selecting the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media has been ongoing since November of last year. On July 9, the Association of Journalists of Serbia submitted comments to the parliamentary Committee for Culture and Information regarding the proposed members of the Council, stating that six candidates do not meet the requirements. The parliamentary committee responded that the list has already been established and that there is no point in reconsideration. Saša Mirković from the Association of Independent Electronic Media stated that at the committee meeting, an agreement was reached on seven categories, but that there are irreconcilable differences concerning the remaining two.
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“These are categories of organizations that deal with child protection and organizations that come from the sphere of artistic and dramatic associations. The differences are so profound that it is expected that the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Jan Bratu, will intervene in the process again, whose legal team should determine who is right among these irreconcilable positions. Without that resolution, the process of selecting candidates for the REM Council cannot continue,” said Saša Mirković in the program “3D - A New Dimension of the Day” on Insider Television.
Media freedom is one of the conditions for opening Cluster 3 in the negotiation process with the European Union, and this would be the first cluster opened after nearly four years. The condition for unblocking this process is the fulfillment of the ODIHR recommendations, Mirković says.
“A significant portion of those relates to REM and the safety of journalists. The second package is related to media laws. There have been many disputes regarding the way they were drafted; there was no public discussion. Some contentious provisions remain. Only after the process of selecting the REM Council is completed can we say that this third package of prerequisites for opening the third Cluster has been fulfilled,” he says.
Saša Mirković (ANEM): Serbia would look different if media laws were respected.
In response to the statement by the President of Serbia that it is quite normal for media outlets to engage in political activism and work in favor of a certain political option, just as they do around the world, while on the other hand, there is RTS with a completely different role, Mirković states that the media landscape in Serbia would look entirely different if media laws were applied.
“Then it would not happen that this country operates for the first time since the establishment of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media without the REM Council. There is no body that could enforce the law. I do not see that public media services fulfill what the law prescribes. These are the cornerstone media that we all pay for. If they were doing their job, then it would be possible to debate what the president says. We cannot compare ourselves to countries where it is possible for a media owner to declare support for a specific political party during a campaign. In our case, there is a disregard for media laws and media regulations. On the other hand, we live in a country where there is no elementary dialogue. What the president has expressed seems to me more like a preparation for the relativization of the current situation and what could happen as an extremely bad scenario in the near future,” says Mirković.
Source: Insajder
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