In recent years, journalists in Serbia have been facing increasingly frequent forms of attacks, threats, intimidation and pressure that seriously endanger their safety and work. Although such incidents are on the rise, the rate of prosecution and convictions remains low, but a large number of criminal complaints are dismissed or do not result in the initiation of criminal proceedings. This practice has long-term negative consequences, not only for the journalist’s personal safety and media freedom, but also for democratic processes and institutional accountability.
The aim of this analysis is to contribute to a better understanding of the way in which prosecutors’ offices act in cases of attacks and threats against journalists, with a special focus on the differences between formal decisions to dismiss criminal complaints and internal notes stating that there are no grounds to initiate criminal proceedings. Although both outcomes are the result of an assessment that there are no legal or factual reasons for further action, their legal nature and consequences are significantly different – formal decisions enable the right to appeal, while internal notes remain beyond the scope of any legal oversight.
For the purposes of this research, decisions and internal notes obtained from prosecutors’ offices throughout Serbia for the period from 2022 to 2024 were collected. The number of decisions and prosecutors’ offices to which requests for access to information of public importance were sent was determined based on the records of attacks and threats against journalists and media workers, which is maintained by the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office. These records are based on the Mandatory instructions that were first adopted in 2016 and then updated in 2020, which enabled systematic control and monitoring of attacks on journalists. The data was collected based on the update of records by the prosecutors’ offices, which was carried out in April 2025.