Members of the Coalition for Media Freedom will support the action of students and various social groups and professions by joining the general strike on January 24, 2025.
From the beginning, the Coalition has supported the demand of students who are blocking their faculties all over Serbia, demanding responsibility for the tragedy at the Novi Sad railway station in which 15 people died and two were seriously injured.
We invite our membership, as well as other media and media workers to join the general strike and thereby concretely express not only solidarity with students and support for their demands, but also dedication to the standards and ethics of the journalistic profession.
Protecting the public interest is the key task of our profession, and that is why the fight that our students and high school students have been fighting for weeks, joined by educators, is our common fight.
The role of media and journalist professionals has a special weight in that fight, also because many regime media and propagandists posing as journalists damage the reputation of our profession and undermine citizens’ trust in the media in general.
That is why we hereby call on citizens to stop consuming media that promote hate speech and violence, that target our brave students whose demands are of vital interest to the entire society, as well as other fighters for the rule of law.
Due to the necessity of timely and truthful reporting, the members of the Coalition call on the media, media workers, to suspend their work on Friday, January 24, from 11:52 to 12:07 – televisions to darken their screens and radio stations to stop their programs for 15 minutes – and to report on the general strike in Serbia in the remaining period.
In addition to this action, we invite our colleagues and all citizens of Serbia to join us tomorrow at 11:15 a.m. in front of the public media service buildings in Belgrade and Novi Sad and in this way to support the voices of certain trade unions, workers in Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) and Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV) – in which they demand a change in the editorial policy, as well as the resignation of the management people in these media companies.
The Coalition for Media Freedom: the Association of Media, the Association of Online Media (AOM), the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina (NDNV), the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), the Business Association of Local and Independent Media “Local Press”, the Slavko Curuvija Foundation and Branch Trade Union of Culture, Arts and Media ‘Nezavisnost’
