World Press Freedom Day should affirm the right to free, impartial and accurate information. However, the situation in the Montenegrin media space is far from that ideal. Last year alone, 24 attacks on journalists were recorded, while there have been seven since the beginning of this year, warns the Media Union, noting that the situation is worsening.
"During this period, we also had the most brutal physical attack in the previous six years on 'Pobjeda' journalist Ana Rajičković. And as for this year, we recorded seven so-called non-physical attacks, i.e. death threats or other types of threats against journalists and media workers in Montenegro, which all indicates that the environment has deteriorated," says the president of the Media Union, Radomir Kracković.
Although the reaction of the authorities is somewhat faster today, the penalties for attacks are still mild. At the same time, although the pressure of state institutions on the media has decreased, other forms of influence are growing, primarily coming from centers of economic power and the criminal milieu.
The Media Center emphasizes that a special challenge is censorship within the editorial offices themselves, which is often covert but destructive. The latest example is the departure of journalist Nemanja Živaljević from Newsmax Balkan television due to, as he stated, the censorship of an interview with former Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić, which was additionally edited in Belgrade without his consent. The warning is also that despite the existence of almost 200 media outlets, professional standards are declining.
"What the media themselves can do, and I hope that the most influential media, such as TV Vijesti, will do, at least thanks to the examples they have to set, is to really work even harder on self-regulation, to work even harder on correcting professional shortcomings and to work even harder on promoting all mechanisms that will contribute to respecting the standards of professionalism in the media," says Goran Đurović, director of the NGO Media Center.
There are still some developments, considering that, as part of the so-called IBAR laws, media laws were also adopted - but not without objections from the media sector.
"First of all, the Law on Audiovisual Media Services and the Law on RTCG, in the part prescribed by law, which refers to the appointment of new members of key management bodies in RTCG and the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services, which is particularly dramatic, I would say, given that this obstruction is being carried out in parliament itself, by the same parliamentary majority that ultimately adopted these same regulations," adds Đurović.
"The laws have also created conditions for improving the economic position, primarily of employees in local public broadcasters, by increasing the funding of these media by local governments, in accordance with the law. However, what we have in practice is that only some local public broadcasters have complied with that law, while most of them have not," said Krackovic.
Despite sporadic salary increases in some newsrooms and through the "Europe Now 2" program, financial insecurity remains one of the greatest burdens on the profession.
"Primarily because the majority of journalists and media workers in Montenegro still receive salaries below the national average. There are initiatives for negotiations on collective agreements within individual media outlets, and we are still keeping alive the idea of trying to negotiate a sector-wide collective agreement with employers, or media owners," says Krackovic.
While journalists fight for the truth and public interest every day, systemic solutions and true protection of their work are still lacking. On World Press Freedom Day, the message from the Montenegrin media sector remains the same - free media is not a luxury, but a condition of democracy.
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