The Media Council for Self-Regulation congratulates all journalists and the media on May 3rd, Media Freedom Day.
"The corona virus pandemic is a huge trial for all of humanity, and especially for the media and journalists and the activities they engage in. The global crisis has shaken the very foundations of the media from several aspects. First of all, the media is threatened from the financial side: many advertisers have withdrawn or have drastically reduced advertising since the beginning of the pandemic. Newspaper circulations, which were already small before the outbreak of the pandemic, have now halved. Due to the new circumstances, the media had to reduce the number of journalists working in the newsrooms and to reduce the volume of work. All this resulted in a significant decline of all the income that is needed for basic survival," the statement said.
On the other hand, as they say, the states of emergency that were introduced in certain countries and the restrictions that were imposed due to the suppression of the pandemic limited the media's access to information in many countries and, therefore, the performance of journalistic work in a professional manner.
"Because of all of the above, it is necessary on this day like never before to appeal to all governments, including the Montenegrin one, not to allow these difficult times to lead to the shutdown of the media, which are an irreplaceable part of every democratic society. We welcome the fact that the Montenegrin government has already adopted a part of the measures and already helped a number of media, but we also call on the Montenegrin parliament to adopt the new Media Law so that the fund for media pluralism would be operational as soon as possible, which would mean a lifeline for many Montenegrin media at this time," the announcement states.
"MSS also uses this opportunity to praise the work of almost all Montenegrin media in the previous two months and especially the fact that in these challenging times they managed to respect the high professional standards of journalism," the statement concluded.
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