Journalists from the Zenica-Doboj Canton (ZDK) fought for their right to follow the sessions of the City Council of the City of Zenica. The decision to allow them to follow regular sessions again was made at a meeting of a group of Zenica journalists with the Chairman of the Zenica City Council, Snježana Vrhovac, and the Mayor of Zenica, Fuad Kasumović.
The invitation to journalists to the meeting from the city administration came after ten journalists announced that they would not follow the ceremonial session because they were not invited to the previous six sessions, as well as to the constituent session of the Zenica City Council, BH journalists reported.
After the meeting, the mayor of Zenica, Fuad Kasumović, said that he “expects the media to promote Zenica”. BiH journalists remind that he made a decision to prevent journalists from covering regular sessions.
“Criticism of me is welcome, but the priority must be the promotion of the city. Cooperation with the media should be based on mutual respect, and today we have jointly confirmed that,” Kasumovic said.
Journalists have been invited to the next session scheduled for Thursday, April 10, along with the documents on the agenda of the session.
Journalist Velida Kulenović, correspondent of the Radio of the Federation of BiH from Zenica and president of the ZDK Journalists’ Club, told BH journalists that the boycott of Zenica journalists has already yielded the first results by organizing a meeting with the city administration. In a statement, she reminded that the City Council had refused to communicate with this group of journalists for months, denying any information on which legal acts or decisions they based their discrimination against a number of media and journalists, prohibiting them from entering City Council sessions.
She stated that on behalf of the ZDK Journalists’ Club and the BH Journalists Association, Vrhovac also addressed the City Council several times, asking on the basis of which decision of the local government or legal provisions journalists were denied the right to follow the sessions of the City Council. As she said, they never received an answer, nor did those responsible in the City Council want to respond to the meetings they organized in Zenica with the support of the BH Journalists Association and the OSCE Mission.
“We have warned the city authorities that they are violating the Statute of the City of Zenica by not allowing us to monitor the sessions since this City Council was constituted. The Statute of the City, on the contrary, requires publicity and transparency of work, equal access to all media, and not the selection of one media – in this case RTV Zenica, for monitoring the work and live broadcasting of the sessions of the General Assembly on social networks,” Kulenović told BH journalists.
Since the local elections in October 2024, the Zenica City Council held five regular and one constituent session, which could only be watched by representatives of public local television, while other media were not allowed to enter.
When they received an invitation to a solemn session of the City Council of Zenica, journalists decided to boycott it.