Open letter from the editorial team of Nova.rs to Dejan Kocić, Director of United Cloud: Don’t say tomorrow that you were "just doing your job."

Dear Mr. Kocić,

For nearly seven years, the journalists and editors of Nova.rs have been fighting for what should be taken for granted in a normal society - that journalists report freely, that editors run the media without political dictates, and that citizens have the right to the truth.

We have fought this battle under immense external pressure. We have faced threats, physical attacks, and relentless discrediting, accustomed to the regime and those we disturb trying to silence us. However, we did not expect that one day individuals from the very system we worked in until yesterday, and with whom we still cooperate, would participate in this.

We are addressing you as the General Director of United Cloud, a company that, according to reliable information we possess, has been asked to revoke the administrators' rights in the CMS necessary for the daily editing and publishing of news from the editors of Nova.rs .

Let’s not deceive ourselves, this is not a programming decision or a routine intervention in the system where a few simple clicks by an administrator merely "execute an order".

If the editors of Nova.rs are left without the ability to publish news, and that right is granted exclusively to personnel brought in by the new management, the outcome of that move can be unclear only to the naive.

Everyone will know that the people who created this media are technically prevented from doing their jobs.

And rest assured that, for us, such a move has only one name - censorship.

By deciding to implement such a request, Mr. Kocić, you would be participating in censorship in the midst of an election campaign, at a time when the citizens of Serbia need access to information and media that provide a real picture of what is happening in the country more than ever.

The editors who would have these rights revoked have not been fired, are not suspended, and have valid employment contracts. We believe that blocking them in the system would represent a drastic violation of labor rights, and under the circumstances in which all of this is happening, it would also raise serious questions about workplace harassment and bullying.

It is particularly disheartening that a company whose technology should facilitate our work could participate in using it as a weapon for its suppression.

The eventual implementation of such a move would represent a direct blow to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, which explicitly guarantees freedom of the media and prohibits censorship, as well as the Law on Public Information and Media, which protects editorial autonomy and the free flow of information. At the same time, it would raise serious questions about violations of the Labor Law and the Law on the Prevention of Workplace Harassment, as the editors, without any dismissal or formal suspension, would be de facto and technically prevented from performing the work for which they were engaged.

Our valid employment contracts clearly define both the obligation and the right of the editors to edit texts, their sections, and the homepage of the Nova.rs portal. Therefore, the revocation of access to the system cannot be justified as a "technical" or "IT decision".

In the media, this is blatant censorship, which directly attacks the labor rights of employees, the editorial autonomy of the newsroom, and the freedom of information.

Mr. Kocić, we are not addressing you only as the Director of United Cloud. We are addressing you as a person and a colleague.

We urge you to listen to your professional and human conscience before allowing the technology of the company you lead to be used for something that has nothing to do with IT support. Be assured that when all of this passes, it will be recorded who did what.

You can be remembered as a professional who, at a crucial moment, refused to allow his company to participate in the suppression of one of the few free newsrooms in Serbia.

Or you can be remembered as a man whose name became associated with the shameful revocation of the editorial autonomy of a media outlet.

It would be disheartening that one day, when someone asks you why you allowed this to happen and why you participated in one of the largest censorships in Europe in the 21st century, your only response would be:

"I was just doing my job."

There are moments when "just doing your job" is not enough. These are moments when you must decide what kind of job you are actually agreeing to.

The choice, Mr. Kocić, is not ours.

The choice is yours.

The editorial team of the Nova.rs portal

Source: Nova.rs