Inadmissible ignoring of rules

(Source: FoNet) – The Press Council today expressed a protest over the decision of the Commission for evaluation of projects in the field of public information in Belgrade to allocate budget money to newspapers that continuously violate the Code of Journalists of Serbia.

The Council warned in a statement that “drastic ignoring the prescribed rules and rewarding media that do not respect ethical standards of the profession is absolutely inadmissible” and that the City of Belgrade and the Ministry of Culture and Information should react to stop such practice.

“Contrary to the Rulebook for the co-financing of projects, which stipulates that during the decision-making process, special consideration is given to whether against  participants in the competition state bodies, regulatory bodies or self-regulatory bodies imposed measures in the past year, the Commission completely ignored this requirement,” is  stated in a press release issued by the Managing  Board of the Press Council.

It is stated that the City of Belgrade requested information from the Press Council and received information that newspapers Alo and Srpski Telegraph have violated the Code in the previous year five times each.

“By mistake or not, the newspaper Informer, to which four public warnings have been issued in the previous year for Code violations, was not even on the list of media that was submitted to the Press Council,” the statement said.