PODGORICA, 27.04.2020. – The Ministry of Culture recently decided to allocate 150,000 EUR to support the print media at the time of the corona virus epidemic.
The decision was preceded by a competition to which all print media with national circulation applied.
Projects for the daily newspapers Pobjeda, Dan and Vijesti will receive 43,500 EUR each, while the Dnevne novine will get 19,500 EUR.
The decision itself, submitted by the Ministry to the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro, did not specify the details of the supported projects.
The Call for Proposals for Creating and Producing Program Content in Daily Print Media in the light of the situation and economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was launched on March 20, is intended to support projects aimed at timely, credible, professional and objective informing of the citizen, in the context of the situation caused by the corona virus pandemic, protection against misinformation and fake news, support for the exercise of citizens’ rights to pluralistic information and ethical reporting on high self-regulatory principles.
The main criteria include, inter alia, the importance of the project for improving informing to the community from a health, educational and comparative perspective, as well as contributing to the diversity of media content and pluralism of information and content in daily print media.
In addition, the Ministry appreciated the transparency of the ownership structure of the media, the number of employees, the importance and quality of the project (creativity, the reality of the budget and the sustainability of the project), as well as the monthly average of copies sold in the last three months.
The print media recently welcomed the initiative of the Association of Managers of Montenegro, which demanded more favorable credit lines from the Investment and Development Fund for the press.
As previously announced, assistance from the Ministry of Culture was also provided to local public broadcasters, in the amount of 35,000, and commercial and public broadcasters were exempted from paying a fee to the Electronic Media Agency, in the amount of 80,000 euros.
