BELGRADE, 31.05.2018. – The Serbian media are operating under discriminatory conditions because some of them are in a privileged position, participants in Wednesday’s debate on privileged media said.
The debate was organized by the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CINS) to present its research of the media scene which showed that the state Tanjug news agency has received millions of Dinars to shut down but has continued working.
Tanjug was officially closed on October 31, 2015.
The CINS report said that officials from the Ministry of Culture and Information and the board of the news agency are not talking about how it still works. CINS representatives said it’s also not clear how the Pink International Company, which owns the pro-government TV Pink, received 10 million Euro for guarantees on loans from a government export finance agency in 2014.
They said the pro-government tabloid Informer was given a record 25 warnings by the Press Council in 2016 and 2017 for violating the Serbian Journalists Code while the Srpski Telegraf tabloid got 11. Both tabloids were award millions of Dinars at public tenders.
