The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) strongly condemns the organized campaign of defamation and targeting of FoNet journalist Tamara Skrozza, which has been conducted by media close to the government for two days.
Namely, yesterday morning, an almost identical unsigned text appeared (contrary to Article 57 of the Law on Public Information and Media) on the media portals informer.rs and novosti.rs, and it continued in primetime news on Pink Television, and then on other media close to the government today. In those articles, Skrozza is accused of saying in the program “If I Were Someone”, which was broadcast on TV N1, that “President Vučić should have been killed on the night of October 5 and 6, 2000.”
IJAS points out that Scrozza’s sentence from the show in the part where she talks about the events that happened on October 5, 2000, that that night “should have looked different” was taken out of context and that she did not mention President Aleksandar Vučić anywhere and called for his murder, which proves that the mentioned videos are classic lies.
The very sequence of the appearance of these media reports and false accusations in the media shows once again that it is an orchestrated campaign against Skrozza and that it is spreading in an organized manner.
What is particularly worrying is that this is not the first time Skrozza has been accused of attempting to assassinate Vučić. Namely, in 2016, she and several colleagues were accused in the same media, as now, of having the task of “destabilizing the country and assassinating the then Prime Minister Vučić at the behest of the EU and the USA”.
This type of targeting of Tamara Skrozza is also a classic example of pressure on independent media and the creation of an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.
We request the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications to make an urgent announcement on this occasion and in accordance with provisions 143 and 144 of the Law on Public Information and Media to carry out inspection supervision over the implementation of the Law.
On this occasion, IJAS will submit a petition to REM and a complaint to the Press Council, and we will provide colleague Skrozza with all the necessary legal support.