August 15, 2022
The City of Kragujevac board of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has dubbed journalists of the local Glas Šumadije portal “haters and attempted local piddling journalists,” who fake surveys in order to blight the reputation of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the party he heads.
An SNS statement was released following the publishing of an article about organised departures of buses from Kragujevac to Novi Sad to attend the anniversary marking the expulsion of Serbs from Croatia during the 1995 military operation Oluja [Storm].
Glas Šumadija’s editor noted that the portal has evidence that some of the people didn’t even know why they were gathering, while others were forced to respond to the SNS call. The Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation used social media channels to call on SNS to apologise to this portal’s journalists for the insults and branding levelled against them.
Journalists of Radio Goraždevac received threats after publishing news about the suspension of an Albanian police officer in this Kosovo village [Gorazhdec in Albanian]. The threat warned: “You have an hour to delete it or I’ll break the teeth of everyone in the newsroom”. The threat led to the detaining of one Momir Bulatović, whose mother works for the police. According to the writings of the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS), she insulted Damjan Portić, a journalist who witnessed the threat being issued, while he was in the station. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Peć [Peja] has launched an investigation. Journalists’ associations have requested that the authorities protect journalists, with the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation doing likewise.
