The analysis of the comments under the texts on Montenegrin portals showed serious shortcomings, as hate speech, incitement of intolerance or violence, misogyny and homophobia, but also the presumption of innocence could be recognized in them.
The Center for Civic Education (CEO) conducted monitoring of comments on internet portals from April 1 to 30, with an emphasis on compliance with the Media Act. This is the second round of monitoring in a little over a year, and CGO claims that there is no progress in respecting legal obligations in editing comments.
"In the context of Article 36 of the Law on Media, which, among other things, prohibits the publication of comments that express ideas, claims and opinions that cause, spread, incite or justify discrimination, hatred or violence... comments with hate speech dominated on the national or on a religious basis, usually directed towards persons of Montenegrin or Serbian nationality, and often also members of minority nations, then comments with hate speech towards the LGBT population and comments of a misogynistic character", the CGO announced.
They explained that this legal provision was most violated in the comments on the In4S portal, where, they claim, out of 60 selected texts, as many as 51 contained comments contrary to that article of the Law.
"In the same number of selected texts, portal Analitika had 38 that contained comments contrary to this article, CdM 31, portal Vijesti 29, portal RTCG 28, Aktuelno 25, Borba and Pobjeda 23 each, while portals Antena M ( 13), Day (12) and Standard (1)", said CGO.
CGE's analysis showed that Internet portals continue to violate the Media Act. The CGE reminded that the Media Act, which entered into force in August 2020, introduces a number of novelties, first of all, regarding the obligations of the portal's editors to, under threat of misdemeanor liability, remove comments with illegal content, within 60 minutes of finding out, i.e. reporting.
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