Minister resorts to deceit, attacks on UG to defend disputed media laws

Petar Lazović, UM

On the second day of the parliamentary debate, Serbian Information and Telecommunications Minister Mihailo Jovanovic once again issued a statement in which, in an attempt to defend the laws tabled in the Serbian Parliament, he lashed out at United Group.

Jovanovic said that, despite the fact that, starting the very first draft of the law, it was defined that telco operators would have an equal position in the multimedia market, United Group has been conducting an organized campaign in the past 15 days by abusing the fact that it owns media outlets within its company and uses them for its own business interests, justifying this with an alleged fight for media freedom.

The Minister said this is solely due to the fact that these laws enable a fair game for telco operators in the multimedia market and that Serbia now has reform laws, aligned with the media strategy and EU legislation, laws that will further reinforce the foundations for the advancement of the media scene while strengthening the role of the media as a guardian of democratic values in society and emphasized that this is far more important for all citizens, as well as for journalists, than the business interest of a private company that defends itself by attacking the work of this Ministry.

However, the public should know that the Minister’s statement is not true, that is, that the media strategy, adopted by the Government, does not provide for the possibility of the state owning media outlets in any way. The law tabled in the Serbian Parliament is directly in violation of the media strategy, under which the state is to withdraw from media ownership. We quote for the Minister:

“Media strategy, 2020: The impression is that the state is still a significant player in the media market. The process of publicly owned publishers’ privatization needs to be completed in order to establish an equal market position of the media and prevent undue influence on editorial policy.”

The Law on Public Information and the Law on Electronic Media have been in effect since 2014, and they stipulate that all publicly-owned media must be privatized without exception. These laws ban publicly owned entities from establishing media publishers.

The Minister also took the opportunity to say that this is in line with the European legislation. We remind the Minister that the state does not have a majority stake in media outlets in European Union countries such as Austria, Germany, France, Belgium and other, and that they all have serious mechanisms to prevent abuse.