The new convocation of the Assembly demonstrated commitment to the improvement of dialogue with journalistic associations and openness to solving problems, said the representative of the Democratic People's Party, Dragan Bojović.
As announced by the Assembly, Bojović, at the regional conference "Improving dialogue between parliament and journalists from the Western Balkans" in Skopje, said that the media sector in Montenegro is facing numerous problems.
"According to his words, the new convocation of the Assembly, at the very beginning of the mandate, demonstrated commitment to improving the dialogue with journalist associations and openness to solving problems," the Assembly stated.
Bojović said that meetings were held with representatives of the Association of Journalists and the Media Union, where, according to him, the willingness to work together to improve the overall environment for the media's activities was shown.
"Recently, the Assembly has been recognized as the most transparent parliament in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, according to the results of a recent survey," said Bojović.
He stated that the Assembly is working on defining mechanisms that will more effectively suppress hate speech, slander and lies, as well as on normative and institutional protection of sources of information and the confidentiality of journalistic secrets.
Bojović recalled the initiative within the current convocation of the Assembly to grant journalists the status of official person, which is in the implementation phase.
He stated that frequent attacks on journalists oblige them to act more strongly and proactively, so that the safety of media workers would not be compromised.
"Many times it happened that journalists were detained, beaten just because they were reporting on some protest gathering, meeting, even though it is their job and does not have to be correlated with their personal beliefs," Bojović said.
He stated that the topic of hate speech in the media is particularly complex and challenging for adequate normative framing.
"Hate speech and discriminatory terminology that is expanding on social networks is particularly problematic," said Bojović.
He stated that it is particularly important to know the limits of freedom of reporting, recalling that defamation is decriminalized in Montenegrin legislation.
"This can be understood as an incentive for media freedom, but in the meantime, the number of lies, manipulations, denunciations of various kinds, which are often motivated by very dubious motives, has significantly increased," said Bojović.
He stated that it is necessary to think in the direction of more efficient and rigorous misdemeanor punishment, which would reduce the expansion of such negative phenomena in the media sphere with significant financial sanctions.
"Also, hate speech, on the other hand, should be criminally sanctioned more diligently," said Bojović.
He stated that a continuous dialogue with the media must be conducted in order to better understand their needs.
"Our vision is a country where the media can work freely, in a safe environment and on a regulated market, regardless of their editorial policy," Bojović said.
He stated that the focus of the Assembly is fully focused on the reform of media legislation, the media strategy and the activation of the existing Fund for encouraging pluralism and diversity of the media.
The reform of the media legislation will place special emphasis on online media, improving the protection of journalistic rights and integrity, as well as effective and impartial self-regulation.
As he added, the reform will also focus on transparency of market conditions for all media actors, transparency of media ownership and public subsidies.
He said that without media freedom, there is no free civil society.
"All of us together must provide the conditions for journalists to feel protected and encouraged to do their work freely, as well as to jointly affirm the integrity and dignity of the journalistic profession," concluded Bojović.
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