SARAJEVO, 18.07.2019. – President of Journalists Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina Faruk Zupcevic spoke for N1 about the attitude towards journalists during their reporting on the recent case “Aluminij”. He warned that any disclosure of the statements to “selected” media could only cause doubts in what was discussed and that for some reason the truth is hiding, and not contribute to solving this great problem.
In his answer to how media professionals should behave in situations where they can not get the right information or when they are in any way denied, and on the other hand some other media get this information without any problems, Zupcevic pointed out that it is completely outspoken to talk about it. Such cases of denial of information, says Zupcevic, were present earlier in both entities, but that is “inadmissible”.
He reminded that journalists are doing this job not for their own sake but because of the citizens, and also for the role they have, which is contributing to democratization of the society.
-Journalists are the foundation of democracy – Zupcevic said, adding that there is no democracy without media freedom.
For N1 television he commented on social networking, including the Twitter status of SNSD member Rajko Vasić, who stated that “only in Republic of Srpska journalists are attacking Srpska. In the RS last year, five attacks on journalists, most drastic on Vladimir Kovacevic”.
– If honest, responsible people put a mark on their head when they talk about corruption and crime, that’s a problem. When I have a chance, I defend journalists who eat bread with seven crusts. Journalists in BiH are struggling to live, and on top of it all, you deny or reduce the freedom they should have – said Zupcevic.
He recalled the Reporters without borders report, according to which BiH was in 63rd place in 2018, but also the OSCE says that media freedom in BiH has fallen steadily over the past ten years.
– It’s a fall because we were in the 19th and 24th place in 2004 and 2011, but in comparison with the region we are still good, so now you can think of what it’s like in the environment. Still, that’s not comforting at all – he added.
Zupcevic dreaded the fact on how little journalists are paid in BiH. A few years ago the Journalists Association of BiH tried to make an analysis of how it all functions and had a lot of problems to come up with data. They had to “ask someone who knows someone” to tell them what is the salary of journalist.
– It ranged between 250 to 500 euro, it’s a little higher in the public broadcasting services – concluded Zupcevic.
This Association continuously warns of violations of the rights of journalists. Recently they reported on Twitter profile that journalists who were waiting for the outcome of the session of Presidency BiH were “expelled from the Presidency building” and had to wait for the conclusions of the session in the park across the building.
(N1)