Tabled by NUNS, UNS, SINOS and GS KUM Nezavisnost (Serbia)

Although the Republic of Serbia has undertaken some concrete steps, safety of the journalists has not improved, numerous attacks and threats on journalists are recorded continuously, and the existing protection mechanisms have not proven to be sufficiently effective and adequate.

The most important and effective mechanism was developed within the multisectoral Standing Working Group for Journalists’ Safety, with a developed system of contact points for fast reporting and monitoring incidents against journalists, monitoring the procedures that have been initiated and reacting in case of irregularities.

Independent journalists and media are exposed to various types of pressures, targeting and smear campaigns from public officials and pro-government media, which often leads to harassment and serious threats by ordinary citizens, primarily through social networks.

The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) and Journalists Association of Serbia (JAS) recorded around 140 cases of attacks and pressures in 2022. In 2023 IJAS recorded 57 cases of attacks and pressures (11 verbal attacks, 6 physical attacks and 40 pressures).

According to the records of the Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office, in 2022, 81 criminal reports were submitted to the public prosecutor’s offices. In 26 cases a decision was made to dismiss the criminal complaint or an official note was issued stating that there is no basis for initiating criminal proceedings. In 5 cases a guilty verdict was handed down, and in one case, the verdict was acquittal. Also, 6 cases are ongoing before the court. In 5 cases the perpetrators are unknown, and 40 cases are at some stage of proceedings before the prosecution.

Until the end of March 2023, Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office recorded 14 new cases, out of which in 4 cases a decision was made to dismiss the criminal complaint or an official note was issued stating that there is no basis for initiating criminal proceedings, 10 cases are still in pre investigative procedure.

Finally, there are still no judicial epilogues in the cases of murder of journalists Milan Pantić, Dada Vujasinović and Slavko Ćuruvija. Despite the ten-year work of the Commission for Investigating Murders of Journalists and two first-instance verdicts of 100 years for the head of the secret police at the time in the case of the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija, the journalistic community is worried because of all the circumstances we live in.

This verdict should end the chain of impunity and justice should finally be served. If this does not happen, every hope for professional healthy journalism in Serbia will be killed.

In the case of journalist Milan Jovanović, whose house was devastated in an arson attack in 2018, trial has also not been completed. Conviction was handed down at first instance court for now.

The number of SLAPPs has been on the rise in the past couple of years. According to the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia data, in 2021 and 2022 there have been 40 lawsuits that can be characterized as SLAPPs.

The analysis of recorded cases shows that the target of SLAPPs are investigative media outlets and media that report critically about the work of public officials, businessmen, crime etc. The media are being exhausted by a large number of legal claims and the amounts requested as compensation, as well as by evidently unfounded claims.

Mainly, the claimants are public officials, politicians, businessmen, and companies.

The European Federation of Journalists meeting in its general assembly on May 11 and 12 in Hague calls on:

• Serbian judiciary to conduct prompt, impartial, thorough and effective investigations into all cases of murders, attacks, harassment and intimidation against journalists offline and online, ensuring no impunity for perpetrators;
• High representatives of the executive power, members of National Assembly and other state or local officials to stop with targeting and using of abusive narrative and thus provoking the smear campaigns against investigative and independent journalists and media;
• Decision makers to take all necessary measures so that the legal framework foresees the additional necessary safeguards to deal with obviously unfounded or abusive court proceedings against public participation;
• Judiciary to provide additional training for judges in order to build their knowledge and capacities in detecting and dealing with manifestly unfounded or abusive court proceedings against public participation.

Journalist Arman Soldin was killed in the afternoon of 9 May 2023 in a shelling attack near Chasiv Yar, in eastern Ukraine. The 32-year-old was working for the news agency Agence France Presse (AFP). The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ/EFJ) join their affiliates in Ukraine and France in expressing their condolences to Soldin’s relatives, colleagues and friends.

The attack took place at around 4.30pm on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a town close to Bakhmut, which has been at the epicentre of the fighting in eastern Ukraine for several months. Four AFP colleagues and a group of Ukrainian military personnel survived the attack uninjured.

Soldin, a French citizen born in Sarajevo, had been living in Ukraine since September 2022, when he started leading a video team’s coverage of the conflict. He was one of the first AFP correspondents to enter Ukraine after the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, travelling regularly to the front lines in the east and south.

“His death is a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine,” said AFP Chairman Fabrice Fries.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragic news, only two weeks after the death of Ukrainian fixer Bohdan Bitik. Arman Soldin’s work has been essential in bringing images from Ukraine and informing citizens around the world about the realities of the war. We pay tribute to all the journalists who have risked their lives since the beginning of the conflict,” said EFJ President Maja Sever.

“Today our thoughts are with Arman’s family and friends. No journalist should ever be targeted for doing their job and covering a war is no excuse for that. Today is another sad day for the journalism community. We demand justice for the killing of Arman,” added IFJ President Dominique Pradalié.

Arman Soldin is the 14th media worker to have been killed on duty since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Messages of solidarity from journalists’ unions in Ukraine and France were also shared on Twitter.

The President of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), Sergiy Tomilenko, tweeted: “Terrible news. A TV reporter @ArmanSoldin for @AFP and @canalplus was killed at the front. This is the second murder of a journalist in the last two weeks in Ukraine, for which Russia should be punished.”

“Our thoughts are with his family, his friends and all those who were close to him. And to all the colleagues who have done, are doing and will continue to do their job of reporting at the risk of their lives, in Ukraine and elsewhere,” wrote the SNJ.

CFDT-Journalists said: “The terrible news of the death of our fellow war reporter Arman Soldin is frightening. At the age of 32, he was already an experienced journalist, recognised by his peers. The CFDT journalists send their support to his colleagues and relatives. This war must stop!”

“French journalist of Bosnian origin @ArmanSoldin fell in the exercise of his profession, to inform us. Our condolences to his family and our thoughts are with all our colleagues at Agence France Presse,” said SNJ-CGT.

Member of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) Council Judita Popovic told N1 that reality shows are not the only cause of the tragic events that took place in Serbia last week.

Commenting on the demands for the dismissal of REM members, Popovic said she would refrain from simplifying things so much.

“It is legitimate to demand the resignation of all kinds of institutions, even regulators, but I wouldn’t simplify things so much. Reality shows are not the sole cause of this grave social trauma. It is all much more complex, the problem did not arise yesterday, it is not a product of one factor’s doing or failure to so something,” Popovic told N1 when asked to comment on the demand made Monday at the Serbia Against Violence protest in Belgrade for the dismissal of REM Council members.

She added that last week’s mass shootings in Serbia in which 17 people were killed were preceded by tens of years of collapse, building of the cult of violence and primitivism, criminalization and violence in all spheres of society.

“The easiest thing to do is to replace someone. If the system remains intact, and continues to function as it is, we have achieved nothing. We merely replaced individuals who are just some visible exponents of a general manipulation that is not present only in the media,” said Popovic.

She admitted that the REM failed to do its job and regulate the media sphere in Serbia, which, she said, is in a state of chaos.

Regarding the requests to regulate and even ban reality shows, Popovic explained that everything should be done in line with the Electronic Media Act, meaning that such content should be broadcast at night, when it is not that accessible to children.

She said that, in spite of everything, she would not ban reality shows because once censorship is introduced that will lead to new steps in the same direction.

“That is not a solution. If solving the problem of violence were that simple, I would say – okay, we will ban reality shows. But you have an audience of millions watching that,” stressed the REM Council member, adding that she would refrain from dividing and confronting the society “which has suffered enough and is still suffering.”

The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) once again calls on all media to refrain from scandalous writing in these tragic moments and to respect the Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics. IJAS strongly condemns the writing of the online portal Republika about the funeral of those killed in the massacre in the vicinity of Mladenovac.

We remind the online portalRepublika not to further disturb the families of the victims with its writing and other accompanying multimedia content. It is extremely important in reporting such events that there is a spirit of compassion and discretion. This type of writing can lead to re-traumatization in the family of the victims, and in the audience to panic, because sensationalism in the entire public creates a sense of threatened security, resulting in collective fear, anxiety, agitation, withdrawal.

The Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics states that “a journalist must respect the privacy, dignity and integrity of the people he/she writes about, as well as think about the consequences of what he/she publishes, be guided by what is in the public interest and whether they threaten someone’s existence, health or life”.

We remind you that the basic provisions and guidelines of the Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics in such tragic events are related to the protection of privacy and that the journalist is obliged to respect the privacy, dignity and integrity of the people he/she writes about.

IJAS

9.5.2023

An informal network combating sexism in the media and advertising industry has collected over 830 sexist articles in Croatian media in just two months. The Network, established on March 8th, stated that sexual objectification of women is the most common form of sexism, identified in 358 articles. This was followed by derogatory and trivializing reporting on the appearance or behavior of women, noted in 245 articles. The next most common category is the promotion and reinforcement of gender stereotypes, observed in 108 articles, followed by the reproduction and perpetuation of gender stereotypes regarding victims of gender-based violence in 91 articles. There are also misogynistic or hate speech articles, as well as homo/bi/transphobic articles, of which 31 were listed.

The informal network found the highest number of problematic articles on Dnevno.hr, followed by 24sata.hr, Net.hr, and Slobodna Dalmacija.

“Considering that the media are the main creators of public opinion, we can conclude that such reporting greatly contributes to gender inequality, humiliates women, and reduces them to (sexual) objects intended for male gaze. Unethical and insensitive reporting on gender-based violence supports violence, while the promotion of gender stereotypes through media articles contributes to ‘reducing’ women to traditionally gendered roles solely as mothers and homemakers, secondary and subordinate to men,” the Network stated, warning that such reporting by the media violates laws and codes to earn clicks at the expense of women’s bodies and lives.

Although the Network has repeatedly reported various media to the authorities, most editorial boards ignore the warnings and recommendations and continue with misogynistic reporting practices.

The informal network consists of the Center for Civic Initiatives Poreč, Center for Social Development, Research and Innovation – INOVA, Women’s Group Karlovac “Step”, Association “Sofia”, Association of Rainbow Families, SOS Rijeka – Center for Nonviolence and Human Rights, Nansen Dialogue Center Osijek, Center for Women’s Studies, Association ZUM, Association “HERA” Križevci, Center for Support and Development of Civil Society “DELFIN”, and the Croatian Youth Network as a supporting member. The Network announced that it will continue to monitor the media and advocate for stricter sanctions against those who repeatedly violate laws and codes.

The Network was established during the implementation of the project “Our Daily Sexism.” The project is implemented by the Center for Civic Initiatives Poreč in partnership with the Croatian Journalists’ Association and the Icelandic Women’s Human Rights Organization Kvenréttindafélag Íslands, funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway through the Active Citizens Fund under the EEA Grants in the amount of 89,812.51 euros.

Source: CJA

The Croatian Journalists’ Association expresses concern over a systematic campaign that has now shifted false and dangerous accusations against the Novosti weekly and the journalists working there to the parliamentary benches. The last two parliamentary sessions have been marked by shameful, dangerous, and unacceptable statements by MPs such as Željko Sačić (Croatian Sovereignists), who accused Novosti of spreading anti-Croatian propaganda and accused Croatian Serbs of inciting terrorism and spreading Chetnik ideology. Sačić was supported by Nikola Grmoja from the Bridge party, claiming that Novosti does not address issues of interest to the Serbian national minority and putting forward the dangerous idea that they should only be allowed to address such issues.

Joining the chorus of dangerous attacks, MP Ružica Vukovac (For a Just Croatia) criticized Novosti, alleging that they publish falsehoods about the Homeland War and World War II, among other things, and asserting that the said weekly spreads intolerance towards the majority Croatian people. During a parliamentary debate last week, the same MP called for proceedings against Novosti’s editor, Andrea Radak, for allegedly inciting intolerance. In a ludicrous accusation, Ružica Vukovac called on the Minister of Internal Affairs to initiate proceedings against Novosti’s editor based on amendments to the misdemeanor law. Responding to such an extremely dangerous accusation, the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament, Gordan Jandroković (HDZ), stated that calling for persecution because of what some newspapers write is unacceptable.

This instigative and dangerous rhetoric by certain MPs mirrors the writings of Hrvatski tjednik, which has long spread hatred towards Novosti and its colleagues, who are prominent Croatian journalists decorated with numerous awards from the Croatian Journalists’ Association. The CJA understands that such a campaign is not accidental, but warns that this rhetoric, which has moved from obscure weeklies to parliamentary benches, is extremely dangerous and amounts to openly targeting our colleagues. Therefore, we ask: who will take responsibility if something happens to journalists and employees at Novosti?

The CJA fully supports colleagues who are the targets of dangerous accusations aimed solely at discrediting and ultimately shutting down this weekly, while at the same time these MPs have no issue with instigative weeklies spreading hatred and historical revisionism.

For the Executive Board of the CJA

Hrvoje Zovko, President