On 27 April 2017, during protest in Skopje, which later resulted in the storming of the Parliament building by nationalist demonstrators, a total of 21 journalists were threatened or barred from reporting at the scene. One of them, Goran Trpenoski, was dismissed yesterday by the Civil Court in Skopje, which did not recognise his status as a journalist. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and its affiliate AJM/ZNM challenge the interpretation of the Macedonian court and call on it to review its decision.

Goran Trpenoski covered the events of 27 April 2017 for the online media Sakamdakazham (sdk.mk). He was threatened and decided to sue for obstruction of the right to access information and for psychological damage. Yesterday, in her verdict, judge Jovanka Spirovska Paneva explains that at the time Trpenoski was not a journalist because he worked for the online media sdk.mk, which according to the Media Law is not considered a media outlet. Furthermore, in this verdict, the court does not recognise the right to information as a constitutional right.

The EFJ and AJM believe that the verdict violates European legal standards of press freedom as defined by the European Court of Human Rights. The verdict also violates the case law of the Macedonian Court of Appeal which confirmed that professionals working for online media should not be denied the title of journalist.

The EFJ joins its affiliate AJM in demanding a review of this ruling, which violates press freedom.The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) is the largest organisation of journalists in Europe, representing over 320,000 journalists in 72 journalists’ organisations across 45 countries

BELGRADE, 14.04.2021. – Veran Matic, the head of Serbia’s Commission for Investigation of Journalists’ Murders, said on Tuesday that the names of those who slain Milan Pantic, a Belgrade Vecernje Novosti daily correspondent from the central Jagodina town in 2001 were known, but were free since the Prosecutors’ Office for Organized Crime said it did not have enough evidence.

Matic told the state RTV Vojvodina the police investigation was over and that they “have a picture of what had happened, and who committed the murder, but that they are still free.”

He added it was difficult to prove since the crime scene was contaminated immediately after the murder. Still, it was clear they were a group for “contract killings, regardless of a motif.”

Matic said the Commission believed that it was an organised crime linked to concrete privatisation,” about which Pantic wrote.
“We asked the Special Prosecutors’ Office to take over the case, but it said that we had to prove that was the organised crime issue before they dealt with it,” said.

Pantic was gunned down on June 11, 2001, outside the building he lived in.

PODGORICA, 13.04.2021. – Trade Union of Media of Montenegro (SMCG) is marking eight years of struggle for a better position of journalists and media workers and for the improvement of professional standards and freedom of the media.

On the occasion of the birthday, we are introducing a new service – Know your rights, and we are also launching a new website of the organization.

SMCG was founded on April 13, 2013 in Podgorica as a branch union of the Union of Free Trade Unions of Montenegro (USSCG). Since then, about 600 members from more than 20 Montenegrin media have joined the SMCG, which makes up almost half of all employees in the media sector in Montenegro, so SMCG is the largest media organization in the country. SMCG is also a member of the largest international journalistic organizations – the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

During the past eight years of difficult and challenging struggle for a better position of media workers in Montenegro, we have implemented a series of public campaigns, actions and protests in order to improve the economic and social status of media employees, solve attacks on journalists and improve professional standards of journalists and media workers. We also provided free legal aid and legal advice to hundreds of our members and other media workers. Thanks to our proposals in the process of amending media laws, the autonomy and independence of journalists within newsrooms has been improved. SMCG is also the first organization in Montenegro to run the most up-to-date base of attacks on journalists and media workers for years, propose changes to the legislative framework and make concrete proposals on how to increase the protection of journalists. In 2017, SMCG launched an initiative to adopt a new Branch Collective Agreement for the media in order to improve the labor rights of journalists and media workers and increase their salaries, but, unfortunately, negotiations eventually failed because employers were unwilling to accept our proposals. We will renew the initiative in the coming period because the position of media employees is still at an unsatisfactory level in relation to the role that the media have in Montenegrin society.

In the past eight years, we have conducted dozens of researches on the media scene in Montenegro, the position of journalists, the application of media laws and attacks on journalists, which represent a valuable database on the state of media freedom and are often cited domestically and internationally.

Our vision is Montenegro as a democratic society in which media employees work professionally in the interest of citizens and who are satisfied with their material status, where their labor rights and professional freedoms are respected and where they objectively inform citizens, without fear of being pressured by their work. Salaries of journalists and media workers are generally still below the national average, some work illegally and without adequate contracts and their rights are often violated. Due to all that, the biggest challenge in the coming period remains the improvement of the material status of employees in the media, to which SMCG will give its full contribution. Also, big problems remain censorship and self-censorship, various pressures on the free work of journalists and attacks on journalists, and all this will continue to be the subject of our organization’s attention.

On the occasion of the eighth birthday, SMCG is launching a new service – Know your rights. We have expanded the legal team, which will, every other week, except for labor rights, answer the professional dilemmas and questions of our members. We invite the membership, but also the interested public, to ask questions to our lawyers via social networks, e-mail or telephone.

We will publish the answers to all these questions and dilemmas on the new website, where our associates will also publish thematic articles in the field of journalism and media.

We call on all journalists and media workers in Montenegro to be in solidarity, professional in their work, to resist pressure and to work together to improve their position because united we can do a lot and polarized, as we are now, we become easy prey to various influences while our status is not significantly improving.

PRISTINA, 12.04.2021- The Association of Journalists of Kosovo – AJK, is extremely concerned with the sexist and offensive language used by the football coach, Tahir Batatina, towards the sports journalist of RTK, Qëndresa Krelani.

Batatina during a TV show addressed the journalist with the words: “You in journalism can only peel newspapers, or clean something, but commenting football in this way no …. you are not on my level, this is not journalism, starting from your appearance … ”

The sexist, offensive and totally inadequate language used by Batatina is extremely disturbing and unacceptable. For AJK, it is not only worrying how little women are represented in the media, but also the way they are represented.

AJK calls upon the Football Federation of Kosovo – FFK, to take action against coach Batatina for the used language, and encourages all the female journalists that despite the stereotypes of the society, to not give up practicing their profession, in any field they want to report.

SARAJEVO, April 9, 2021 – The BH Journalists Association sent a request to the representatives of the Government of Serbia to consider the possibility of vaccinating journalists and other media workers from BiH in health care institutions of the Republic of Serbia.

According to the letter sent today on behalf of BH Journalists by the Secretary General of the Association Borka Rudić, there are a total of 6,000 media employees in Bosnia and Herzegovina. So far, close to 1,000 people have been vaccinated in Serbia, and about 5,000 are waiting to be vaccinated.

– We would be grateful if you would approve vaccination in Serbia for at least one part of this number, if not all. We in BH Journalists would be grateful if you would accept our request with due care and consider all possibilities of donating vaccines for journalists from BiH, through vaccination in Serbia or through donation of vaccines to governments in BiH (at any level). If there are such possibilities, our Association would fully take over the preparation of the list of journalists who want to be vaccinated, as well as all other technical tasks related to the organized arrival for vaccination – states the letter sent by BH Journalists to Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, Minister of Health Zlatibor Lončar and Minister of Culture and Information and Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia Maja Gojković.

BELGRADE, 06.04.2021. – Members of the Coalition for Freedom of the Media express deep concern over the pressure exerted on a number of media outlets, which were sued by the company “Millennium team Ltd.” from Belgrade in which they demanded huge compensation for material damage.

Local media JUGpress from Leskovac and Infovranjske from Vranje, as well as the daily Danas, the portal Nova.rs and cable televisions N1 and News Maxadria, were all sued for credible transmission of information presented at the press conferences of the People’s Party in Leskovac and Vranjska Banja in early February this year, and “Millennium team doo” in the lawsuits requires determination of the violation of reputation and compensation for material damage in the amount of 100,000 euros per lawsuit.

We note that “Millennium Team Ltd.” did not officially deny any of the information before filing the lawsuits, nor did it ask the defendant media to publish their response to the allegations made at the press conferences of the People’s Party.

The huge compensation that this company demands in lawsuits is an open form of pressure which, only on the basis of paying the fee for responding to the lawsuit, practically leads to shutting down the sued local media, and  sends a message to all the other media that they can be shut down overnight if they do not respect the power of large companies, and with this the public information and freedom and the right of citizens in local communities to be informed about all events without censorship are seriously endangered.

Members of the Coalition for Freedom of the Media are:

Association of Media

Association of Online Media

Independent Journalists Association of Vojvodina

Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia

Association of Local Independent Media “Local Press”

Slavko Curuvija Foundation