A Reporters Without Borders official told N1 that there has been no visible progress on media freedom in Serbia over the past two years, adding that the police did little to protect N1 reporters.
Pavol Szalai, head of the RSF EU/Balkans Desk, said that the Serbian police did not do enough to protect the N1 reporter who was harassed by hooligans while reporting on a protest in front of a mural of convicted war criminal General Ratko Mladic in central Belgrade earlier this month. He said that RSF strongly condemns attacks on reporters, adding that journalists must be allowed to cover issues of importance to society.
They have to be protected during events like that because they are important to society, he said. According to Szalai, journalists must be able to report freely without obstruction and the state has to secure the flow of information by protecting them.
He said that the RSF is not as optimistic as the European Commission on the issue of media freedom in Serbia. He noted that very little progress has been made on security for journalists. The level of freedom is one of the criteria for membership in the European Union as the basis of democracy and it is not in line with European standards in Serbia, he said and added that the things that stand out are impunity for crimes against journalists, verbal assaults, insufficient independence of pubklic broadcasters, attempts by politicians to influence the media, a lack of journalism ethics and media pluralism.
We have seen Serbia take one step forward and two steps back on media freedom, he said and added that insufficient progress has been made on the issue of safety for journalists.
We want to see real progress in the daily activities of journalists in Serbia, he said and added that the Working Group for the safety of journalists is a good thing with the government taking part in it but warned that attacks from the Prime Minister’s party have continued causing some journalists to quit the working group. According to him, the prime minister must respond requests for interviews and the ruling party’s attitude towards journalists has to change. If members of the government refuse to appear on certain media, they are keeping information from the public and preventing those media from doing their job.
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