Reforms in a War-Ridden Surroundings
Montenegro:By Branko Vojicic (AIM Podgorica)
When, three years ago, Montenegro set out down the pro-European road, one of the first steps of the reformist authorities was to pass, in February 1998, a new Law on Information - one of the most liberal ones in the region. The Law was enacted with the consensus of all parliamentary parties and with the help of experts from the OSCE and it vouches for the freedom of the press and information in accordance with the standards set down by international documents on human rights and freedoms (UN, OSCE, CE, EU), as is explicitly stated in the legal text. Particularly striking is the provision of the Law which equates the founding rights of domestic and foreign legal and physical entities when electronic and printed media are concerned, although there were no instances of foreigners actually investing in Montenegrin media up to now (apart from the widespread practice - characteristic of the era of Milosevic's repressive Law on Information - when a number of Serbian newspapers were registered and printed in Montenegro).
The Law on Information has fixed the boundaries between the editing of the state controlled media and the task of running them as a business enterprise. The state TV net and the daily Pobjeda, both founded by the Montenegrin parliament, are run by a Managerial Board made up of representatives of parliamentary parties who elect the general manager. The editor-in-chief, on the other hand, is appointed by the Program Board consisting of parliamentary parties’ representatives too, but in this case each party is represented by a single delegate regardless of their size and strength. In order to secure their influence on the choice of the editor-in-chief, the parties have agreed that a two-thirds majority of the seven-man Program Board is needed for the appointment. The only trouble being that, if this is the case, the same holds true when it comes to dismissing the man. The fact was vividly illustrated by the editor-in-chief of the state TV net Velibor Covic who managed to cling on to his post in spite of the several months lasting attempts of Soc's People's Party (at the time, still a part of the ruling coalition "For a Better Life") and Bulatovic's Socialist Party to remove him from office.
The setting apart of editing and business management has brought upon a situation wherein no one from the editing echelon involved in the creation of the programs, be it on TV or on the radio, has any insight into the finances or is able to determine the amount of money available. All expenses have to be approved by the business manager and the general manager in turn, thus the editor-in-chief rarely knows exactly what the salaries of his own journalists and editors amount to, let alone the sum spent on this or that show or program. When the management of the state RTV net called upon the Montenegrin government for help in the reconstruction of the media, the government addressed the EU which engaged a BBC expert for the job.
When the said British expert requested access to the financial dealings of the company in order to facilitate the process of the decentralization of the budget and the diversion of funds to specific sectors, he was not allowed to do so. His demand was rejected on the grounds that the law allows for the supervision of the finances solely if it is to be carried out by the Supervisory committee, an auditing board founded by the Montenegrin parliament. Just for the record, the said committee has not held a single sitting up to this very day and the identity of its members remains a mystery to the general public. Nevertheless, the BBC " action program " was presented to the top officials of the Montenegrin government. The Managerial Board of the state TV net even adopted it as a binding legal document, although it has never been actually enacted. The anticipated deficit for 2001, according to the BBC man, is to amount to a little over a million DM, considerably less than the loss of the Montenegrin RTV registered during the first ten months of last year amounting to seven million DM. Estimating that the negative balance will reach 11million DM by the end of 2001, officials claim that the main culprits for the present losses are: the oversized network of correspondents, the low RTV subscription rate (for a time, 47 pfennigs, later on 1,5 DM incorporated into telephone bills) and the limited financial resources allotted to the company from the budget.
The founder of the state media, the Montenegrin parliament, i.e. the seven parliamentary parties involved in the coordination of the law, in practice act not only as the founders, but as editors of the media too. A part of the state establishment experiences the media not as a public service, but as a political and party one, bound to fulfill their particular requests, from the coverage of the appearances of party leaders, through the attendance at the meetings of their youth organizations and various councils, up to individual requests of some ministers and co-ministers that their each step be recorded. A set of rules governing the presentation of parties during the election campaign has also been adopted, reducing the role of the journalists to mere "cassette-bearers", while an entire TV channel, because of the forthcoming elections, is soon to be become the so called" TV Parliament ".
Exactly how the politicians view the role of the state TV net is best illustrated by the following case. When a three-page long typed announcement which would have taken up full eight minutes of the daily news was cut down and edited, its author, a minister, faxed the editor-in-chief letting him know that he "will never attain the level of a socialized being". Equally illuminating is the instance of the deputy premier who, in front of the cameras, told the editor-in-chief of the state TV that "no editor-in-chief will determine where the cameras are to go". The deputy premier was revolted by the absence of a TV crew that should have covered the opening of committee session he presided over. Faced with such pressures, the editor-in-chief of the Montenegrin TV suggested on several occasions that the media company he heads be transformed into a public service. His appeals brought no response of the general public, apart from the support of the independent media, particularly the weekly Monitor.
On the other hand, no codex governing the work and conduct of journalists and editors in the public media is in existence, so that there are a lot of unprofessional practices and instances of improvisation. Furthermore, the editorial staff has engaged a number of unrecognized journalists who have replaced the war mongers responsible for the creation of the "hate-speech" and its propagation in years since the beginning of the unraveling of the Yugoslav crisis. What we now have is a paradoxical situation: the new personnel is yet to be trained, the old one has not been fired, probably out of fear that this could be interpreted as a purge. So, the old cadre has been put aside, but these people continue to receive their paychecks regularly although their work-efficiency is zero, their salaries additionally burdening the already meager budget.
Since a national TV net under the direct control of politics is virtually non-existent in present day Europe, if the application of the BBC model - according to which this media company is run by a Board of Governors with not a single currently active politician as its member - is not possible, a formula in use in many other countries in transition might, at the least, be adopted. The said formula goes: a third of the body governing public media is made up of politicians, a third by renown cultural and public figures, representatives of major national institutions and religious communities, while the last third consists of reputed journalists and representatives of professional journalistic associations. At present, journalists employed in state-controlled media hold no sway over the choice of their own editorial staff. The sole exception to the rule is the composition of the governmental body assigning frequencies. The mentioned committee is made up of representatives of the state Information Bureau and the Ministry of Economics, RTV, Telecom and the Montenegrin Independent Association of Electronic Media (UNEM). Not a single instance of withholding a request for the allocation of frequencies has ever been registered in Montenegro, of course, provided that applicants had met all of the prescribed legal requirements. What did happen was that the federal government of FR Yugoslavia (unrecognized by the government of Montenegro) without any authority installed repeaters on military installations in property of the Yugoslav Army, thus setting in motion the Yu-Info TV net and unlawfully taking possession of frequencies with no prior agreement with the Montenegrin authorities.
Owing to the configuration of the terrain, a larger than usual number of repeaters is necessary when Montenegro is concerned, resulting in a privileged competitive status of the state RTV in comparison to private media. As for the regulatory rules, there are no set legal limitations concerning the expansion of private repeaters’ networks, the sole hindrance being the limits of their technical and financial resources. In the meantime, thanks to numerous donations of international governmental and non-governmental foundations to private TV and radio stations , the quality of frequencies has substantially risen in the private sector as well. The first steps in the integration of the independent media concerning the acquisition of equipment through the appropriate electronic media independent association (UNEM) have already been undertaken.
As for access to information, the law guarantees free and unhindered access to all information. A governmental regulation prescribes liability for all authorized entities in breach of the law, but not a single instance of a journalist instituting legal proceedings because information had been denied him was ever registered, nor was anyone ever sentenced by the court on these grounds. In present day Montenegro it is difficult to find out the circumstances under which a ship or a hotel were sold, not to mention the more delicate political issues and information concerning the military and the police. The fact that the corresponding regulatory rules having to do with the military are in the jurisdiction of the federal government which the Montenegrin authorities do not recognize, only complicates things further. Two years ago, at the time of the NATO bombing, this made life miserable for Montenegrin journalists and numerous foreign correspondents - notwithstanding the guarantees of the Montenegrin government for the freedom of press. At the time, military courts ordered arrests of some journalists who have failed to follow instructions having to do with the state of war and the military police arrested foreign correspondents, took away their equipment and money. Visas were demanded of foreigners, although the government of Montenegro had abolished them previously.
There are no provisions in the Montenegrin Law on Information prescribing the time-limit within which the authorities are obliged to render information. According to the law, the authorized person may withhold information "only if it is classified as secret by the law".
"A specific law, establishing certain information and data as secret, has to be coordinated with the standards set down by international documents on human rights and freedoms, "stipulates the law on information. Nor are there any legal sanctions for covering up information of public interest.
Citizens are still denied the right to look into proper police files, but they are entitled to rectification when their rights and interests have been infringed upon. Circumstances restricting the said rights and penalties for disregarding the law on the part of the editor-in-chief are cited in the legal text too. The law forbids the publication of illegally gathered information (wiretaps, bugs, hidden cameras and microphones, release of information from secret files or those originating from security and intelligence services); it also prohibits the advertising of weapons and drugs and protects the integrity of the minors. Nevertheless, these provisions have been violated in some instances, particularly on the part of Belgrade media and officials during their skirmishes with Montenegro, but no one was ever called to account because of it before a court of law.
Journalists are not obliged to reveal the source of their information, neither in court, nor to the police. According to the letter of the law, they cannot be held accountable if they refuse to reveal the source of their information to investigative officers or during court proceedings. But, if a private party sues a journalist for something he has written, the accused has to prove his allegations, just like anyone else. The practice of summoning journalists to "informative talks" (for interrogation) in the police no longer exists in Montenegro. To be more precise, in the past five years this happened a single time, when the police summoned the correspondent of Belgrade daily Politika, Dragomir Becirovic. Judging from what Becirovic himself later wrote, the inspectors were interested in the source of his information concerning the security of the president of Montenegro, in view of his allegations that Djukanovic was flown to meetings with NATO officials from the airport in Dubrovnik, in planes belonging to the alliance.