A group of local media in western Serbia refused to accept funding from the Novi Pazar city authorities as part of media project co-financing awarded by tender.
The group of six media outlets (Sto Plus Radio, TV Sandzak, Glas Islama, Free Media, A1tv.net and Takt info) said in a letter to the city council that the decision to refuse the money was taken in protest over the fact that city budget funds were being allocated unfairly as they have been for years. The protest comes after the city council decided to give more than 80 percent of the budget funds earmarked for the media to Radio TV Novi Pazar.
“We hoped that things would change but the tender commission decision to allocate 32.25 million Dinars of the total of 39 million to RTV Novi Pazar with another 800,000 Dinars to the station’s journalists for their productions with just 6 million Dinars for everyone else has convinced us that the Novi Pazar city council does not want to end the bad practice which is jeopardizing media pluralism and diversity as well as project co-financing,” the letter from the six editors in chief said.
They added that city authorities have had the same attitude towards media outlets close to them and the others.
The Beta news agency (owner of Sto Plus Radio) said that RTV Novi Pazar has gotten more money at local tenders than any other media outlet in the country – 3.3 million Euro or about 84 percent of the earmarked funds in the Novi Pazar city budget.
Source: N1
