Veran Matić: I believe we are living at the end of journalism (VIDEO)

“We still have a project called Safe Journalists at ANEM, and as part of this project, we have engaged, among others, the retired inspector Kecman, who continues to monitor these cases. We are still gathering documentation, albeit informally, and we will never stop, regardless of the outcomes. We must never give up and allow these cases to become ad acta and be stored away somewhere. Regardless of what the competent authorities do, we cannot allow that,” explains Matić.

President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, stated last night on RTS that “something like the attack on two journalists from Informer in Zaječar and Kosjerić” has not happened in the last 30 years in Serbia. Matić asserts that any violence against anyone is absolutely unacceptable.

“I believe that it is unacceptable, of course, towards the individuals mentioned by the president with such great commitment to their safety. I cannot call them journalists because those who do not adhere to the journalist code are not journalists, and I believe they do not adhere to it and that they practice this unprofessionalism against our colleagues on a daily basis in substantial measures. I think that the representatives of those media outlets are the greatest enemies of professional journalism. This is something we must never forget and must always reiterate, but at the same time, any violence against them is absolutely unacceptable. I cannot understand and cannot comment on what the president said, as it is enough to mention the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija and the murder of Milan Pantić. We have that attempted assassination of Dejan Anastasijević, which changed life in his family and certainly shortened his life. This is an absolutely uninvestigated attempted murder. There are a vast number of cases occurring daily. For example, the attack on Vuk Cvijić happened at the end of May last year. It took the police six months to provide a report from the 20 cameras that were present,” notes Matić.

Veran Matić also adds that in the last ten months, there have been 30 physical attacks on journalists, with charges filed in two or three cases, but absolutely nothing has happened with them.

“We have a situation in Niš where our colleague Tamara Radovanović from Južne vesti was literally removed by the police 20-30 meters away. The assailant was caught on camera, and nothing happened to him; no one even identified him. Next to him, we recognized the assailant who attacked our colleague Uglješa Bokić in Novi Sad in June of last year. So, these are factions that serve to intimidate citizens, but in these cases, journalists as well. This violence has become a daily normalization, and we can see a concentrated area between the Assembly, the presidency, and the City Assembly, which is literally a no-go zone for journalists, where they can only experience physical attacks like Irena Stević and Stefan Miljuš did. And again, nothing happened,” believes Matić.

In his text within ANEM's project "System for the Prevention of Violence and Protection of Journalists," Veran Matić explains that Stevan Dojčinović, in several recently published interviews, talks about the change in judges’ behavior since 2021 when, in the KRIK case, they began to rule on freedom of speech and media freedom due to a generational change among judges. Until then, the KRIK editorial team had won every court case in their favor and did not alter their professional approach - as before, they strictly adhered to the journalist code, all rules of the journalistic craft, fact-checked, and consistently practiced due diligence in journalism.

“I believe a decision has been made to destroy KRIK, and that is precisely what is happening. They are being destroyed in various ways. The KRIK editorial team has experienced three break-ins at their journalists' apartments, in which nothing was stolen. The prosecution and police have never revealed what happened there. They have not even made an effort to do so in a professional manner, to connect those three cases and say, let’s see if there is perhaps a common denominator. This means the editorial team is experiencing a wide range of attacks - from threats to surveillance and, of course, these lawsuits that are very dangerous, but again, the least of their problems is the fines. The KRIK editorial team has shown that they have a certain level of popularity and that people understand what is happening to them, and they can literally gather the funds to pay the fines within a few days. But that is time they must spend there. When you are criminally prosecuted, you must be present. Both Stevan Dojčinović and Bojana Pavlović must sit in the courtroom for the entire duration of the process. So much time and energy is spent, and imagine several such trials for a small editorial team like KRIK,” explains Veran Matić.

Matić concludes that if such a plague is not stopped, it will certainly contribute to what he calls “the diminishing of journalism.”

Source: Insajder