ANEM WEEKLY MEDIA UPDATE

AUGUST 25 - AUGUST 31, 2001

• JOURNALISTS SHOULD BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR HATE SPEECH: ORLIC

BELGRADE, August 27, 2001 Federal Information Secretary Slobodan Orlic called on professional journalists' associations to begin the process of establishing the criminal accountability of certain journalists, who were “disseminating the hate speech” during the past decade.

In an interview with FoNet news agency, Orlic said that the journalists’ responsibility was not identical to the politicians' responsibility, but that it was evident that both were responsible for disseminating hate speech during the years of armed conflict.

“Owing to that hate speech, many crimes were committed, many people were killed and many violence acts were performed. The editors and the creators of that hate speech, who present themselves as being journalists, should be tried in courts. I will not say that there must be a Hague Tribunal for journalists, too, but they have to undergo the process of criminal procedure and of the punishment,” Orlic said.

The names of the people who had edited and made “the news programmes and texts full of hate speech” were precisely known in Serbia and in Yugoslavia, Orlic added.

• TV KOSAVA JAMMING TV NIS SIGNAL

NIS, August 28, 2001 Belgrade-based Television Kosava has been jamming the signal of Television Nis for the past several days by broadcasting their programmes on channel 57, which has been used by this local television station for the past five years, ANEM correspondent Zorica Miladinovic reported.

Bratislav Stamenkovic, director of the town’s public company Info Nis, Television Nis' parent company, said that due to TV Kosava's signal jamming, programmes broadcast on TV Nis could be seen only on several streets in the entire city.

“A week ago, Television Kosava began broadcasting their signal on channel 57, so that the two signals have been cancelling each other out. I immediately called the director of the technical department of Television Kosava on the phone. He was quite rude while explaining to me that he had the regular license to broadcast the programme in that channel, and that I should address the Ministry which had issued that license,” Stamenkovic said.

He admitted that Television Nis had not obtained the license for using that frequency, although they had submitted such demands on two occasions, three and four years ago, without any success.

Nis mayor Aleksandar Krstic said that the town’s authorities would fight against media and every other kind of centralised authority in Serbia.

“With the authority of the town’s government, we can ask the Federal Telecommunications Ministry to state their stand clearly whether Kosava was allocated that frequency, and whether that was done according to the existing legal procedure, or on the basis of exerting the political pressures. We can ask that such a decision, if it exists, be annulled, and that this type of decision be made only after the decision on already submitted applications for frequency allocation, which were being neglected in somebody’s drawers in the Federal Telecommunications Ministry,” Krstic said.

• MEDIA IN SERBIA - TEN MONTHS ON

BELGRADE, August 28, 2001 Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) Chairman Veran Matic said in an official press release:

"One of the first immediately noticeable results of the political changes of October 5, 2000 was the opening up of the state and quasi-state broadcasters and print media in Serbia to the representatives of the former opposition bloc and NGO sector. High hopes raised in the aftermath of the October changes - that the media field would be efficiently and swiftly reformed in a just manner, that political influence on the media would be largely eliminated - have nonetheless proved to be overly optimistic."

• CRIMINAL ACCOUNTABILITY FOR AGITPROPS?

BELGRADE, August 28, 2001 Federal information minister Slobodan Orlic began the process of establishing the criminal accountability for journalists and editors who disseminated hate speech during the past ten years, calling on professional journalists’ associations to lead the way in this process.

“Only the Association of Journalists of Serbia has reacted to violations of the rules for the professions of journalists and editors, by establishing their court of honour. We have expelled seven of our members, and the procedure of expelling two more members who work with the state-run media is in the process,” Nino Brajovic, president of this Association, told daily Glas javnosti.

Brajovic said that the members who had been expelled from the Association were Milorad Komrakov, Goran Matic, Dragan Hadzi-Antic, Zoran Jevdjovic, Dragoljub Milanovic, Dusan Cukic, and Djordje Matic, who had been all in the leading editorial positions in the state-run media.

The procedures against one of the editors of Radio Television Novi Sad, as well as against Miroslav Markovic, the author of the text “[Journalist Slavko] Curuvuja lived to see the bombs” have been in progress.

According to unofficial information, Markovic claimed under interrogation that Mira Markovic had written the text published under his name, but her alleged authorship had not yet been proved, Brajovic said.

Until the decision on his case, Markovic will continue to work in the archives department at Politika.

“These seven journalists have not been dismissed from their media organisations, Radio Television of Serbia and Politika, but they asked us, as their professional association, to present well-founded evidence for their dismissals. And after we had presented them with the evidence, they have still not given them their written orders of discharge,” Brajovic warned.

Brajovic also said that the journalists who had been the spokespersons and agitprops of the former regime should themselves feel the pangs of their consciousness.

“Criminal accountability according to the law is applicable to absolutely everybody. Still, the Criminal Act in its present form contains no mention of the hate speech. There are only the provisions about the dissemination of the religious, racial and ethnic hatred, and on that grounds everybody should be held responsible, while the hate speech is a little bit broader category,” Brajovic commented.

He said that he opposed bringing charges against one thousand or two thousands journalists who had worked in the media that promoted the former regime, because he was against the notion of collective guilt.

“There will always be some people who will applaud the government, but there should be certain mechanisms which shall prevent the journalist from disseminating the hate speech. It is possible to provide the necessary legal provisions against that in the Information Act,” Brajovic said, noting that Orlic had at first advocated against such a law, while he himself had recently said that such a law should be adopted in the shortest possible period.

• BLIC PHOTOGRAPHER BEATEN

BELGRADE, August 28, 2001 During the police investigation that took place after Slobodan Arambasic and Dusan Trkulja fired shots at each other, wounding Trkulja, some young men who were obviously Arambasic’s bodyguards approached the Blic photographer in sight of numerous policemen, punched him in the stomach, and ordered him to stop taking photographs of crime scene and Arambasic being taken into custody, and demanded that he give them his film from the camera.

None of the police officers did anything to protect the photographer, he told press afterwards.

Some other reporters had their film taken too, and a videocassette was taken from Television Kosava crew, he added.

According to unofficial information, Arambasic and Trkulja are co-owners of the betting place Zona srece Radnicki, located on the property of the Sports Club Radnicki in Zvezdara.

• RADIO TELEVISION OF SERBIA PLANS NEW COMPETITION

BELGRADE, August 29, 2001 The new competition for the vacancies in the leading positions in Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) will be announced either towards the end of this week, or in the beginning or the following, RTS Board of Directors president Dejan Mijac announced yesterday.

Mijac said that a meeting of the Board of Directors should be held soon, in which the present situation in Radio Television of Serbia would be considered, especially after numerous criticisms about repeating the competition for the position of editor-in-chief of the News Programmes of Television Beograd.

The competition for this position was cancelled because the general director of Radio Television of Serbia, Aleksandar Crkvenjakov, had not proposed to the Board of Directors that any one of the candidates that had submitted their applications should be accepted for the job.

One of the candidates was Gordana Susa, the president of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, and the senior editor of VIN’s productions.

Recently, Susa brought charges against Radio Television of Serbia, on the grounds of their cancellation of the competition.

Mijac confirmed that the representative of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, Branka Prpa, announced that she would resign from her position, and added that he would talk to her during the following days, in order to try to dissuade her from the announced course of action.

• SUSA’S CHARGE INEFFECTIVE, MIJAC CLAIMS

BELGRADE, August 31, 2001 The Radio Television of Serbia Board of Directors announced yesterday the second competition in order to choose and appoint the editors-in-chief for the News Programmes of Television Beograd and Novi Sad, as well as of the Second and Third Programmes of Radio Beograd, and to fill the vacancies of the positions of director of Radio Television Novi Sad, and of the editor-in-chief of the Programmes in Serbian of Radio Novi Sad.

The previous competition for the position of editor-in-chief for the News Programmes of Television Beograd was cancelled because the general director of Radio Television of Serbia, Aleksandar Crkvenjakov, did not propose any of the candidates who had submitted their applications to the Board of Directors.

Obrad Savic, who was chosen for the position of editor-in-chief of the Third Programme of Radio Beograd, submitted his resignation in the meantime, due to the protest of the employees in the Third Programme and of some of media professionals against such a choice by the Board of Directors.

Gordana Susa brought charges against Radio Television of Serbia on the grounds of their annulment of the previous competition for the position of editor-in-chief of the News Programmes.

Dejan Mijac, the president of the RTS Board of Directors, recently said he believed that Susa’s charge would not have any influence on their repeating the competition.

• MILANOVIC IN COURT SEPTEMBER 13-14

BELGRADE, August 31, 2001 Legal proceedings against former Radio Television of Serbia general director Dragoljub Milanovic will begin in the Belgrade Second Municipal Court on September 13-14.

Milanovic is accused of allowing sixteen employees of the state-run television to be killed during a NATO bombing raid on an RTS television building during the night of April 23, 1999.

The court summons was delivered yesterday to the mother of one of the killed employees of Radio Television of Serbia, Zanka Stojanovic.

Milanovic, who has been held in custody up until this time, will face serious criminal charges of violating Article 194 of the Criminal Act of Republic of Serbia by endangering public safety.

source: ANEM Mailinglist
published by: Roland Brunner rbr@medienhilfe.ch date of release on this site: 04-09-2001

go to top

P.O. Box, CH-8031 Zürich, Switzerland
Phone +41-1-272 46 37,  Fax +41-1-272 46 82, email: info@MEDIENHILFE.ch