Without Clear Rules and Laws
Serbia:By Vesna Vujic (AIM Beograd)
In the last couple of months the media in Serbia have been practically functioning in a kind of interregnum, at least as far as the Law is concerned. Ever since the changes of last October until the formation of the new Government of Serbia (end of January) in their work the journalists more or less relied on their professional code.
Although there are no valid rules, practically all the media, including the until-recently regime-controlled, are freely reporting on all events. The police no longer bring in journalists for questioning. There are no court trials in which the media and journalists are persecuted. True, individual members of the former ruling parties have announced the filing of criminal charges for slander and insult, but for the time being only against those who have wronged them, and not against the media, which carried the controversial statement.
Editorial boards have been changed in the regime-controlled newspapers and the provisional managements appointed, but apart from free information, the professional level of reporting has not been raised. In the meantime, practically a continuous debate has been going on in Serbia on the ways for the quickest and most painless transformation of the state and independent media. There are many proposals, but also the awareness that the media changes will be hard and will take time to implement.
The democratic changes of October 5 have brought the state media with their ruined reputation, lost confidence and degraded profession, in an unenviable position. And it is precisely such environments that are hardest to change. The new authorities have tacitly abrogated the infamous Law on Information, which in something over two years of its validity practically abolished the freedom of public expression. This was done only after the Federal Constitutional Court proclaimed it unconstitutional, early this year. The damage this Law has caused can be best illustrated by the fact that on the basis of its provisions some 67 media were fined and the total amount they had paid on the basis of rulings of infraction courts reached some 30.6 million dinars, i.e. cca DM 2.5 million. The first to be fined under the mentioned Law was magazine "European" (Evropljanin) whose owner and editor-in-chief Slavko Curuvija was killed in April 1999 in the middle of Belgrade under still unexplained circumstances. Practically, the Constitutional Court confirmed the constitutionality of only those provisions, which relate to the freedom of information. According to the Federal Constitutional Court, disputed were norms relating to the system of the mass media registration, restriction of their publishing, prevention of the distribution of the press and spreading of information, financial compensation for the damages, fines and penal procedure, as well as the time of the entry of that Law into force.
The former regime ruthlessly abused legal norms so as to control public information, so that before making a first step in transition, the new authorities have to perform a major task of correcting the mistakes of the past to the extent possible. There are rumours that the judiciary had also been abused so as to alter the performed ownership transformation in several major media houses.
Jelisaveta Vasilic, once a judge of the Economic Court in Belgrade through which all ownership transformations were carried out, drew the attention to the unconstitutionality of some court rulings as they encroached on right of property which was changed on the basis of various state decrees and not the law.
She particularly mentioned the case of the daily "Borba" and "Studio B" whose shareholders lost everything overnight, but also that she was unable to obtain data for "The Politika" whether the nominal shareholders (major Serbian firms and banks) are the real shareholders or, to put it more precisely, had these firms actually paid in their share capital.
In public debates on changes in the media, the local experts have stated that the future of the media lies in private and state-controlled media, but not the state as a party formation, but the state as a service of all citizens. Therefore, Management Boards in the state media should not be at "parity" with the party composition of the Assembly, but should be independent bodies composed of experts and prominent public figures. This would guarantee that the media meet European standards, i.e. that we would have the media, which are free of party everyday interests.
The proportions of internal destruction of the RTS are so great that this large and for years generously financed house is still unable to put up a team of journalists capable of preparing an information programme. This house is unable to carry out the serious work of democratic transformation on its own, but for the time being there is no real help from anywhere. Political protagonists, who rushed to delegate their members to the new Management Board, only confirm that they do not have a clue about the media. Recently, a media analyst Snjezana Milivojevic, gave an interesting proposal: "This time the Management Board of state television should be elected at intervals which do not coincide with parliamentary elections and then we would be able to see how would state television serve public interests without any connection with parties in power". With this proposal she drew the attention to the practice of local political parties resorting to arrangements outside any public influence which can destroy television organisations (RTS, Studio B, Palma, Pink, BK, Politika) and which should understand that fundamental media changes are ahead irrespective of their ownership and management structures. Milivojevic reminded that the RTS was conceived according to the same model as the former big common state, so that perhaps now, in this changed, new and small state, better solutions could be found for the functioning of three state TV channels.
Perhaps one or even two channels could be given to independent producers, local or alternative media or be leased under control so that the RTS could finance itself from its own sources and not only by collected subscription fees. According to her, by advocating professional standards, the independent media could give a decisive contribution to the establishment of a high-quality public information sphere and facilitate the media transition.
According to the agreement reached in the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), the new RTS Director will be Mile Isakov, a journalist, who after assuming his new duty plans to resign as President of the Vojvodina Reformists, which is a member party of the DOS coalition.
"I shall do my best for the RTS to become a public service of all citizens of Serbia, which should be regulated by the law so as to avoid it being in the service of only one party. The RTS needs to be reconstructed and at least one half of its journalists and workers are redundant labour who do not know the first thing about the job. (Note of the author: The state television employs about eight thousand people.) Capable journalists have been driven away, incapable ones were employed and the professionals who stayed on during the totalitarian decade, forgot all about their profession. I shall conduct an audit of the company's financial operations and carry out revision of personnel policy, while former officials will be held accountable for ruining the RTS for the sake of their own interests, as well as for unlawfully firing and hiring journalists, and especially for admitting the incompetent and incapable ones", said Isakov.
Federal Ministry of Telecommunications has recently declared a moratorium on the allocation of frequencies because of the total chaos in this field. Minister Boris Tadic pointed out that it was very difficult to make a cross-section view of the real state of the electronic media: "Some new radio and TV stations keep cropping up which use frequencies as if it were their exclusive private property. Currently, some 700 radio and 300 TV stations are broadcasting and it is high time to put the telecommunications sphere in order once and for all. The Ministry will no longer allow unlicenced operation and reactions will be more than violent." He announced the establishment of an expert team and Federal Telecommunications Council. The Council will include all interested parties.
Minister Tadic promised that the badly needed new law on telecommunication would be adopted by May. The Ministry also announced the revoking of all frequency licences and inviting tenders under clearly set criteria. Utilisation rates will be divided into several categories. The mass media, national and local televisions should be exempted from paying the rate for the use of frequencies. To all others two kinds of rates would be applied: information houses and programmes dealing with culture would be charged lower rates; and commercial radio and TV stations would pay higher rates.
Late last year an international round table "Transition to Free Journalism" was held in Belgrade. This was the first gathering at which representatives of all the most important media and journalistic organisations in Serbia, competent ministries for communications and information, as well as prominent representatives of the international community tried to set the directions of the future media transition. They expressed an unequivocal readiness to resolve all problems in cooperation with the media, their organisations, employed journalists and experts. It was decided to take advantage of experiences of countries which had embarked upon transition process much earlier so that by adjusting their experiences to the local conditions their mistakes could be avoided and advantages used. It was also agreed to adjust the entire process of the transition of the media and public information to international standards and make it compatible with the ongoing processes in the region of South-East Europe.
The gathering pointed to various methods which are needed for the transition of the non-regime and regime media, as well as the largest state media, such as the RTS, including the media like "The Politika", Borba's editions and others, in which ownership rights have not been regulated or have been improperly resolved. Each of these groups has specific problems which concern individual subgroups: TV, radio stations dailies, weeklies, local and central papers. The ownership structure of individual media is undefined so that this raises a number of special problems, starting with financing and revenues to social problems, redundant labour, etc.
The sphere of media legislation will necessarily also undergo drastic changes which will be as far as possible adjusted to the needs of the media, the public, society and state, as well as to international standards. As far as the professional issues are concerned, the round table brought up the subject of the competences of journalistic associations and trade unions, their mutual relations, as well as a number of other resulting problems such as a court of honour, journalistic code, rights and necessary restrictions of the possible abuse of the freedom of the press. In addition, these will be resolved by the establishment of working, expert and research groups, by the organisation of subject-specific gatherings, round tables, conferences, through the exchange of experience and international expertise.
Local journalists think that it is necessary to legally standardise the public information field, but for reasons which are quite different those which had motivated the previous regime to legally regulate this area. Namely, legal regulation is now needed in order to guarantee in detail the constitutional principle of the right of citizens to receive and disseminate information. In its general part, the draft law should proceed from the established basic principles of free journalism and go on to define the most important concepts, such as the contents of the right to public information, the concept of the mass medium, the concept of a journalist, journalistic work, and then determine the holders of journalistic rights, specify relations between owners of media companies, editorial offices, editors, journalists and other participants in this profession, to set down the obligations of the sources of information. A special part would treat all other important issues.