Broken laws, codes and ethics: How government and media behave after murders

(Source: N1) In the address of the representatives of the authorities to the public, but also in the reporting of the majority of the media, and after two mass murders in Serbia, all laws, all codes as well as ethics were violated, the guests of the N1 News night show, former President of the Supreme Court Vida Petrovic Škero and professor of FPN Aleksandra Krstić agreed.

Statements by government representatives in which they present details of the tragedy, personal information about the juvenile perpetrator of the crime, but also the President of Serbia who, as he stated, requested the return of the death penalty is a populist move that is extremely dangerous, because society is going backwards, said former Supreme Court President Vida Petrovic Skero.

“We have been dealing with the death penalty for decades, in the desire to become part of a community that fights for human rights, to take a civilizational step forward, and no one has forced it on us, we have fought for decades alone. And then when the president of the state, who is a lawyer by profession, utters the sentence that he is for the death penalty, it means that he is against the Constitution in which it says “human life is inviolable and there is no death penalty”, that he wants to return revenge and take us back to the era when the rule “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” applied,“ Petrovic Skero said.

She also says that all the time from the unfortunate events, from the mass murder that committed a child against a child, and then a young man against the young, she expected that someone had to appear to defend the Constitution and laws, and to say that there was a lot of abuse, and it was supposed to be the Republic Prosecutor or the Minister of Police.

“The most terrible is the statement of the Belgrade police chief who violated so many rights that we wonder in amazement whether it is ignorance, pressure, fueling the desire to create an atmosphere of lynching because it is an inadmissible way of speaking. It was unmanly speech, hate speech, what he did was all that could not be done. Extracting data from personal life, information related to the event itself, showing pictures, it is introducing panic, it is a call to aggression, and then it is not surprising that the public is growing the desire for the death penalty,” explains Petrovic Skero.

She also said that reporting by journalists after the crime was unacceptable.

“It’s amazing what’s been done. Not to mention the laws, it is enough just to look at the journalist’s code. The worst was when the children were leaving the School “Vladislav Ribnikar” and journalists interviewed children, minor children, distraught and crying, without parental consent, you violate the law and the code. Such an amount of torture of children is unbelievable, and then for someone to record a paper with a list of children, whether any of the journalists wondered how these children and these people feel,” Skero said.

When it comes to Aleksandar Vucic’s proposal to reduce the age limit for minors, perpetrators of serious crimes, Skero says that such measures and laws are not adopted immediately after the crime and not in a day.

“Making a proposal is incredible. This change of one, entails many changes to other laws. Even if such a law is passed, it cannot be applied retroactively. I just can’t imagine anyone suggesting such a thing, that the government initiated changes without seriously engaging in conversations with psychologists, educators, experts. Such a quick response is unacceptable,” Explains Petrovic Skero.

FPN professor Aleksandra Krstić said that the “Serbia against violence” rally was a kind of open-air commemoration, where citizens paid tribute to innocent victims in horrific crimes.

“Young people came, people with families, and the main message is what happened to us, but how we are going to get out of the trauma, everything that happened to us. This is a society that is completely destroyed. And the government, instead of calming tensions, they are doing the opposite. Incitement, public disturbance, hate speech all this has been going on for years. And in all this, the media have a great responsibility, with reporting that supports violence, practices distortion of facts, manipulations, fake news, and narratives that encourage the glorification of violence,” Krstic said.

She says that journalists should not name the perpetrators of crimes, do not convey their motives, do not describe the crimes in detail, because this not only glorifies the criminal, but also further disturbs the public.

“The media should not deal with the motives of crimes, they should reduce tensions and address the nation, but not populist, but in a rational way, and that is the hallmark of good governance. In our country, fewer and fewer young people want to engage in journalism because of this state of affairs in society, while in the West it is now the opposite. There are more and more people who want to change something. After the crime, my students asked me how they should report in order to change something, and that is good,” Krstic explains.

Journalists can now change something, Krstic believes, pointing out that now they can learn what not to do when something like this happens, that they must not go to their family pointing the camera and saying talk as well as that the editor is not a god, but that each individual decides what to report on and how to report.