Amendments to the Law on Public Information: Still without draft and approval on the position of the Press Council and the importance of the Journalists’ Code

(Source: Cenzolovka) New minister of information, new working group, new deadlines. However, the new law on public information is still in its old status – i.e. in drafting. Although the adoption of amendments to the umbrella media law was made a priority by the Prime Minister a year and a half ago, the first working group formed on the drafting of this document was dissolved, without a harmonized Draft. The new minister of information formed a new, smaller working group in November, and announced the adoption of the Draft by the end of the year. Now, however, a new deadline — February 10th — is in circulation.

Veljko Milić, a member of the Working Group for Amendments to the Law on Public Information and Media on behalf of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NDNV), told Marker that he is not optimistic that this deadline will be met.

“There are still a lot of issues that need to be decided on and how certain areas will work. There was already a working group dealing with amendments to the Law on Public Information and Media, and then it started from the assumption that this working group had done most of the work and that the new one would only fix it. But on many issues, this working group is practically working from the beginning,” Milic said.

Media pluralism, analysis of missing media content, adequate sanctions for violation of the law, transparent financing through advertising and competitions… All this should be provided or improved by the amended Law on Public Information and Media. And all this, should not be the subject of dispute. However, representatives of journalists’ associations point out that there is no agreement on their proposal to prevent media that violate media laws and the code of journalists according to the decisions of the Press Council from receiving money from the budget and participate in competitions.

“The fate of the Press Council and all these provisions is still uncertain. These are the red lines, and our and I suppose state administrations, about which we will have a problem. We are waiting for the legislation, i.e. the competent committee, to come out with an opinion on the position of the Press Council and the need to introduce the Code of Journalists into the law, but we have been waiting for that for some time. Our position is that this really has to be found in the law itself,” said Gordana Konstantinovic, a member of the Working Group on behalf of the Association of Journalists of Serbia. (UNS)

Since 2014, the state and local self-governments have been awarding money to the media through competitions for projects of public importance. Although the initial idea was to support less commercial content that is in the interest of citizens, numerous examples show that the competition co-financing has turned into a model of financing regular activities, most often pro-government media.

The problem is that it is necessary to predict how it will work in practice and we have had a million examples so far that although something is written in the best possible way, abuse occurs very quickly. So, now that we are foreseeing a certain legal solution, we already have to think about how it can be abused and then we try to prevent it. A lot of time is wasted on this,” explains Veljko Ilic from ndnv.

Marker’s interlocutors also state that the issues of the criminal provisions of the new Law on Public Information have not yet arrived on the agenda of the Working Group.

“Only when all the provisions are prescribed there is room for prescribing and penalties for violating certain provisions. I personally believe that the penalties threatened should be higher because a good part of the penal provisions refers to the conduct of public authorities – non-announcement of the competition, suspension of the competition…”, says UNS representative Gordana Konstantinovic.

A Working Group is working on the amendments to the Law on Public Information, which includes eleven representatives of the state administration and nine members on behalf of the Media Associations.

According to the current media strategy, in addition to this law, amendments to the Law on Electronic Media should have been adopted by now. Although the deadline for harmonization of this document expires in 10 days, the working group for drafting the draft met for the first time only today.

The media strategy stipulates that amendments to the Law on Electronic Media ensure greater independence of REM.

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