Svetski dan vesti: U Srbiji poverenje u medije pada, nezavisne redakcije se bore za opstanak

While editorial offices around the world celebrate World News Day on September 28 with the message "Know the facts. Understand what matters. Choose Trusted Journalism," Serbia welcomes this day with a decline in trust in news, a worsening of media freedoms, and serious issues regarding the financial sustainability of independent and local newsrooms.

World News Day is an international campaign led by the World Editors Forum under WAN-IFRA, the Canadian Journalism Foundation, and Project Kontinuum, aimed at raising public awareness about the importance of verifiable, professional journalism. This year's message is: "Know the facts. Understand what matters. Choose Trusted Journalism."

The same date, September 28, the United Nations also marks as the International Day for Universal Access to Information, with the theme for 2026 focusing on preserving the integrity of information in the digital age and combating information chaos, disinformation, and unreliable content.

Trust in news in Serbia has fallen to 22 percent

The Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for 2026 shows that overall trust in news in Serbia has dropped to 22 percent, which is five percentage points lower than the previous year and significantly below the global average of 37 percent.

Serbia ranks among the markets with the lowest trust in news in the survey. The Reuters Institute notes that respondents in Serbia see media owners, politicians, and the government as the biggest influences on the media, while 47 percent of respondents also cite organized crime as a significant influencing factor.

The same report states that critically oriented media, such as N1, Nova, Danas, and Vremena, enjoy more trust among the audience than a range of pro-government media included in the study.

Serbia falls to 104th place in media freedom

According to the World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders for 2026, Serbia is ranked 104th out of 180 countries, eight places lower than the previous year.

The political indicator was rated particularly poorly, with Serbia at 151st place.

Reporters Without Borders state that while there is quality investigative journalism in Serbia, they also point to political pressures on journalists, propaganda, the impunity of attacks, and a deterioration of the overall media environment.

Independent and local media: projects, minimum wages, and additional jobs

The issues are not solely political. For a large number of independent and local newsrooms, survival is also an economic concern.

A survey on the socio-economic status of journalists and media workers published this year shows that newsrooms dependent on project funding do not have stable incomes, that salaries and engagements often depend on the duration of projects, and that some journalists work for minimum wages or less.

In focus groups, participants spoke about the need to work two or three jobs to make a living, the uncertainty of fee payments, and outdated equipment for which there is insufficient money for renewal.

For local media, the research indicates that they are in a continuous fight for survival, with a significant dependence on project funding and public sources of money.

Attempts to have independent media rely more strongly on audience subscriptions in Serbia have so far generally been insufficient to ensure the sustainability of newsrooms. The internet has accustomed the public to free content, while a large portion of commercial advertising has shifted to large digital platforms.

Nearly two billion dinars distributed through competitions, but disputes continue

Project co-financing is intended to support content of public interest, especially at the local level.

According to the latest assessment from the Association of Independent Electronic Media, around 1.86 billion dinars has been distributed through completed competitions for 2026 and an additional competition in Vojvodina.

However, ANEM assessed in August that the project co-financing system in 2026 "has experienced a fiasco," concluding that key problems from previous years have not been resolved and that there is selective application of regulations and insufficient institutional oversight.

This is the stance of ANEM and other professional associations, rather than a legally established fact regarding the illegality of the entire system.

Professional associations have particularly warned this year about the small share of funds reaching certain independent local newsrooms, as well as that content addressing corruption, public money, and institutional oversight often remains outside supported projects.

REM finally has a president, but the test of its work is yet to come

After three unsuccessful attempts, the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media unanimously elected Stevica Smederevac as the president of the REM Council on September 22.

All eight currently elected council members voted for him, while the ninth member, from the national councils of national minorities, has yet to be elected.

Smederevac is a lawyer and media manager, having worked at RTS and RTV, and since 2012 has worked at REM, where he led the Monitoring and Analysis Service.

His candidacy did not go without criticism. The Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation contested his election, stating that he participated in REM's decisions that the Foundation considers problematic and illegal.

On the other hand, the council members who elected him stated that the decision was the result of an agreement within the body after several unsuccessful attempts to constitute leadership.

The election of a president thus resolves one important institutional blockage, but does not provide an advance answer to the question of how REM will act in practice.

This will be seen through decisions on political representation, oversight of national broadcasters, responses to legal violations, and ensuring pluralism during electoral campaigns.

Local journalism is closest to citizens – and therefore particularly vulnerable

For local newsrooms, issues of media freedom are often not abstract.

A journalist in a small community encounters the people they report on daily, the institutions from which they seek documents, local officials to whom they ask questions, and entrepreneurs from whom a portion of advertising may depend.

For this reason, professional associations describe local media as particularly vulnerable: they are financially weaker, have fewer employees, and at the same time are closest to local centers of power.

However, it is precisely local media that are often the only ones who will ask how much a local trip cost, who was awarded a contract, why there is no water, what is written in the tender documentation, or why a citizen has not received a response from their municipality.

Citizens have the right to know

This year, World News Day does not ask citizens to blindly trust the media.

On the contrary, the message is to choose journalism that verifies facts, cites sources, corrects errors, and clearly separates fact from commentary.

For Webinfo, therefore, the slogan "Citizens have the right to know" is not just a sentence beneath the logo.

This right implies the ability for a citizen to receive information, verify it, see documents, hear different sides, and know who the source of the claim they read is.

Trusted journalism does not ask for trust in advance. It must earn it – with every published piece of information, question, and correction.

Text - WebInfo

Author - Tijana Janković