The Government of Serbia once again made the process of amending media laws pointless, when after two months of intensive work by the Working Group for amending the Law on Public Media Services, Minister Dejan Ristić imposed a draft that goes beyond the framework on which the working group was working, and which is in contradiction with Media strategy.
The imposed draft of the law that was presented to the working group contains a number of serious shortcomings and omissions that directly go against the key guidelines defined by the Media Strategy.
It does not foresee any changes in the way of financing public media services, which is the basic guideline of the Strategy and the key to achieving the independence of public media services. The strategy envisages ensuring stable financing of public services so that the tax is the primary source of financing, and the working group paid due attention to the creation of models that would ensure the independence of public services. However, all proposals were rejected.
In addition, with this draft, RTS (Radio Television of Serbia) and RTV (Radio Television of Vojvodina) remain institutions that dispose of state capital, which renders the institutional autonomy of public media services meaningless.
The proposed Draft also makes meaningless the efforts of the working group to shape the new institution of the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Listeners, Viewers and Readers. The draft stipulates that the public media service shall appoint one person from among its employees to perform the function of the Commissioner, who shall be obliged to keep records of received comments and suggestions and to make suggestions for improving the media services of the public media service. However, this solution, whereby the Commissioner is elected and dismissed by the Director General, leads to the idea of a self-regulatory body of administrative workers who will not have substantial independence in their work.
Bearing in mind the process which, to the surprise of the members of the working group, was interrupted before the work on drafting the law was actually completed, we consider this draft law to have been approved by the minister and express our fear that it will further undermine citizens’ trust in public media services.
Despite the numerous problems that we have been pointing out for years in the work of public media services, we continue to fundamentally advocate for the improvement of their status in the media system of Serbia and call on the management of public services to break the tradition of obedience and stand up for their own financial, institutional and editorial independence, and we offer them the support of the entire media community to persevere in that fight.
The Coalition for Media Freedom,
Belgrade, December 10th, 2024
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’