Censorship in Serbia
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Censorship in Serbia is prohibited by the
Serbian constitution The current Constitution of the Republic of Serbia ( sr, / ), also known as Mitrovdan Constitution ( sr, / ) was adopted in 2006, replacing the previous constitution dating from 1990. The adoption of new constitution became necessary in 2006 ...
.
Freedom of expression Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
and of information are protected by international and national law, even if the guarantees enshrined in the laws are not coherently implemented. However, instances of censorship and self-censorship have been reported; as of 2015 Serbia was deemed "partly free" as judged by
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wil ...
and ranked 59th out of 180 countries in the 2016
Press Freedom Index The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders since 2002 based upon the organisation's own assessment of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. It intends to ...
report compiled by
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
. According to the 2015
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wil ...
report, media outlets and journalists in Serbia have been subject to pressure from politicians and owners over editorial contents. Also, Serbian media have been heavily dependent on advertising contracts and government subsidies which make journalists and media outlets exposed to economic pressures, such as payment defaults, termination of contracts and the like.


Background

In Serbia the transition to democracy took place a decade later than in other Socialist countries. This delay is reflected in the media system whose modernization has been slow and contradictory. The mechanisms of political influence are therefore in place also in the post- Milošević even if they are of a different type if compared with the Socialist past and more sophisticated. At the South-East Europe's first international conference on media freedom, organized in 2011 by the
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
, journalist Gordana Igrić, founder of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) explained how political influence over the media and censorship has changed its nature as, if in the past for politicians was enough to pick up the phone, today media outlets are influenced by a pervasive ideological conditioning. As of 2015 Serbia was deemed "partly free" as judged by
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wil ...
and ranked 59th out of 180 countries in the 2016
Press Freedom Index The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders since 2002 based upon the organisation's own assessment of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. It intends to ...
report compiled by
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
. According to the 2015
Freedom House Freedom House is a non-profit, majority U.S. government funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Wil ...
report, media outlets and journalists in Serbia have been subject to pressure from politicians and owners over editorial contents. Also, Serbian media have been heavily dependent on advertising contracts and government subsidies which make journalists and media outlets exposed to economic pressures, such as payment defaults, termination of contracts and the like. In 2020, Serbia ranked 93rd out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom ranking list. According to
Aleksandar Vučić Aleksandar Vučić ( sr-Cyrl, Александар Вучић, ; born 5 March 1970) is a Serbian politician serving as the president of Serbia since 2017, and as the president of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) since 2012. Vučić served ...
the lower ranking was "due to one case", alleging to journalist Milan Jovanović, whose house was burned down in 2018, "a case which has not been solved yet". In 2021, the Bureau for Social Investigation (BIRODI) reported that Serbian media had become "an industry of populism, promotional, propaganda and revenge tool for personal power", based on nine-years of research.


Censorship and soft-censorship

In 2015, EU commissioner
Johannes Hahn Johannes Hahn (born 2 December 1957) is an Austrian politician who has served as European Commissioner for Budget and Administration under Ursula von der Leyen since 1 December 2019. He previously served as European Commissioner for European Ne ...
was questioned about a
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
report on censorship in Serbia. He questioned its validity, responding "that is no proof. I need to see based on what criteria they produce these assessments." According to Christian Mihr in 2015, executive director of
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
, "censorship in Serbia is neither direct nor transparent, but is easy to prove" with numerous examples of censorship and self-censorship in Serbia with cases of articles critical of the government which were deleted from the Internet, while independent journalists are either threatened or pressured. Mihr also recalled how during the May 2014 floods some articles were taken off websites, while the government "attacked several critical reports" of the official response to the natural events. According to Mihr, Serbian prime minister
Aleksandar Vučić Aleksandar Vučić ( sr-Cyrl, Александар Вучић, ; born 5 March 1970) is a Serbian politician serving as the president of Serbia since 2017, and as the president of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) since 2012. Vučić served ...
has proved "very sensitive to criticism, even on critical questions," as was the case with Natalija Miletic, correspondent for Deutsche Welle Radio, who asked him in Berlin about the media situation in Serbia and about allegations that some ministers in the Serbian government had plagiarized their diplomas, and who later received threats and offensive articles on the Serbian press. Serbia's Independent Association of Journalists (NUNS) endorsed RWB's 2015 report. According to a survey by NUNS in December 2014, 40% of 585 Serbian journalists reported being occasionally subjected to
censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
, while 48% believed their colleagues occasionally self-censor their work. Another survey, by Germany's
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung The Konrad Adenauer Foundation (german: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, KAS) is a German political party foundation associated with but independent of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The foundation's headquarters are located in Sank ...
, from September 2014, remarked that more than 90% of journalists polled said both censorship and self-censorship are present in the Serbian media; 73% agreed that Serbian media lack objectivity, and 95% that reporting is rarely critical. A 2015 report by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) defined and described the emergence of a new form of censorship, namely the practice of soft censorship. This expression, used for the first time in 2005 in a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, refers to an array of practices and schemes aiming at influencing the media without resorting to legal interdiction, direct censorship and direct economic threat. Pressure might include the discriminatory and selective allocation of public funds, the abuse of regulatory powers and opaque and discretionary inspections. Serbia has been in the vanguard of a "global wave of autocratization".


See also

* Media of Serbia *
Media freedom in Serbia Censorship in Serbia is prohibited by the Constitution. Freedom of expression and of information are protected by international and national law, even if the guarantees enshrined in the laws are not coherently implemented. Instances of censorship ...
* Stop bloody shirts


References

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