The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) strongly condemns the announcement of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party regarding the coverage of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) and fully supports the liberation of the public service news program from the illegal and harmful influence of the current government on freedom of expression.
The Serbian Progressive Party called yesterday’s reporting by RTS scandalous and accused “those who are supposed to represent the public service of the citizens of Serbia” that “by taking the side of politicians who would destroy the constitutional order of Serbia, they grossly violated all the codes of journalism and grossly abused the journalistic profession”.
The strongest ruling party is dissatisfied because the RTS newsroom, after almost three months since the beginning of the student protests and after the protests held in front of the public service building, finally saw that these were events of exceptional public interest and began to report more objectively and impartially .
We remind that the editorial staff of RTS initially ignored the student protests, did not view them as events of exceptional public importance, and at the same time conveyed false accusations against students as facts, such as the untrue claim of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, “that young people argue bitterly, and even they are physically calculating because of the distribution of the money they receive from the country and abroad for the organization of the protest”.
It is clear that the Serbian Progressive Party enjoyed ignoring and untruthfully reporting on student and civic protests, and it is expected that they had no objections to yesterday’s news broadcasts by four televisions with national coverage – Pink, Prva, Happy and B92, which continued to lie, with manipulations and hate speech, abuse the national frequency and unscrupulously violate the Law on Public Information and Media and the Law on Electronic Media, as well as the Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
Yesterday, for the first time, Radio Television of Serbia reported on events in the country in a timely, professional manner and in accordance with the ethical code of the profession and legal obligations, and we believe that it will continue to report in this way, regardless of pressure and blackmail.
According to the Law on Public Media Services, Radio television of Serbia and Radio television of Vojvodina are obliged to respect and encourage the pluralism of ideas and enable the public to be familiar with those ideas, without serving individual interests, and also, they must deal impartially with all important social issues and enable an equal confrontation of different points of view. That is why we call on the provincial public service – RTV, to follow the example of RTS and stop being a mere propaganda tool of the ruling party.
Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS)
Belgrade, February 2nd, 2025
