January 31, 2018<\/p>\n
The reason for one of the campaigns was research conducted by NGO CRTA, which showed that government representatives received four times as much space\/coverage in the media as representatives of the opposition, in the period from October last year until mid-January, when local elections in Belgrade were announced and scheduled for 4th<\/sup>\u00a0March. After these results were published, along with the conclusion of CRTA analysts that the pre-election campaign had been launched months before elections were announced, pro-government broadcaster TV Pink presented a series of untruths at the expense of CRTA and journalist Tamara Skrozza, who is a member of this organisation\u2019s board of directors and a research associate. Among other things, they stated that CRTA is financed by \u201cpowerful sponsors associated with [George] Soros\u201d, that Skrozza is not objective and is politically frustrated, while several of her statements made during one TV guest appearance were altered with the intention of making it appear as though she used that opportunity to insult President Aleskandar Vu\u010di\u0107.<\/p>\n A campaign was launched by tabloid newspaper Informer against journalist and Reporters Without Borders associate Una Hajdari, from Pristina, accusing her of \u201chating Serbs, Serbia and Vu\u010di\u0107\u201d after she published a humorous montage of President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 on her private Twitter account.<\/p>\n Similar accusations of hatred of \u201ceverything Serbian\u201d were also lodged against Dragan Janji\u0107, vice president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia (NUNS), and that was even done via a sponsored advertisement on the Facebook page \u2018Srbija NA\u0160A zemlja\u2019 [Serbia OUR country], where his home address was even presented. This came after Vu\u010di\u0107 called out Janji\u0107 for a tweet in which he stated that the recent killing of Kosovo-Serb leader Oliver Ivanovi\u0107 was politically motivated.<\/p>\n Threats and pressures also came in the week after Serbia was visited by a delegation of the European Federation of Journalists, who came on a fact-finding mission prompted by the worrying state of the media in the country. The president of this organisation, Mogens Bjerreg\u00e5rd, said that President Vu\u010di\u0107 had promised during their meeting that he would \u201cevery week unconditionally defend media freedom\u201d.<\/p>\n As estimated recently by European Parliament rapporteur for Serbia David McAlister, considering current EU accession negotiations, Serbia needs \u201cclear progress in terms of respecting media independence and getting to grips with threats and attacks against journalists and the media\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 31, 2018 During the course of just one week, three journalists received threats on social networks or were subjected to smear campaigns led against them by pro-government media in Serbia. The reason for one of the campaigns was research conducted by NGO CRTA, which showed that government representatives received four times as much space\/coverage in the media as representatives of the opposition, in the period from October last year until mid-January, when local elections in Belgrade were announced and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content-en"],"yoast_head":"\n