Radio Television of Montenegro (RTCG) did not provide data sources for the claim that they were the most watched TV station in July and thus violated their own programming principles and professional standards as well as the Code of Journalists.
This was announced by the president of the Media Center Assembly, Dragoljub Duško Vuković, adding that this information was published on the RTCG portal and in Dnevnik 2 on August 3.
Vuković states that the RTCG in the announcement refers to "official measurements", but they did not specify which measurements they were referring to.
"The methodology that the management tries to use to show successes is meaningless and was only used by the previous general manager Božidar Šundić, who wanted to hide bad results in every way. The claim that the First, Second and Parliamentary channels together have the highest viewership is equally meaningless like if, for example, Pink Television boasted that it, i.e. their 45 channels, is watched by the most citizens of Serbia," said Vuković.
He points out that there is no method that can be used to add up the viewership of TV stations and thereby argue the claim that they are the most watched, and that therefore the announcement by RTCG represents "a contribution to the spread of fake news", and that the Council of RTCG should be determined according to this "rough manipulation".
The essence of RTCG's success, according to him, is not viewership, but the trust of citizens, and that this data "will not be published by the general director of RTCG".
"The announcement of RTCG only states that trust in RTCG is growing, and does not state the data on trust, even though this research was carried out by RTCG in June of this year. We believe that this data is not published because it indicates that in a year of work of the new management brought RTCG back to a level of trust lower than that of 2016, when the general director was Rade Vojvodić," announced Vuković.
The Media Center, as he said, also believes that the management of RTCG is not publishing this data because "the essential goal has not been reached", which is for the public service to be the first in trust.
"This goal is not easy to achieve in a year, but it is still possible, because it was managed in March 2018 by the management led by Andrijana Kadija and Vladan Mićunović. After only one year since they were appointed to their positions, Kadija and Mićunović achieved the essential goal of the public service - that the citizens trust it the most. That result was possible because the citizens then knew that they valued professionalism, but also recognized that political parties have no influence on RTCG," Vuković said in a statement.
Vuković believes that today citizens recognize how much parties influence the work of the RTCG, that instead of earlier "control by the DPS, today the RTCG is controlled by several parties, which has not and will not lead to greater professionalism and trust of citizens".
RTCG has never been less transparent, adds Vuković and explains that now on the website you cannot find reports that can help monitor the operations of the national public media service.
"There is no report on the realization of program plans for 2021, so that the public could be convinced of the way public money (14 million euros) is spent. There is no research on the website about the strength of the brand, in order to see what citizens think about RTCG and how we could compare the management's work with previous years. You can't even find the contract of general manager Raonic on the website, while you can find the contracts of previous general managers Šundić and Kadija," Vuković said.
He adds that instead of "self-praise and misleading the public", the management should publish data and respect its own rules, and clarified that by not publishing reports on the work and realization of periodic reports on the implementation of the work program and financial plan, the RTCG Council violates Article 26 of the Law on RTCG.
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