Professional standards

During the year since the founding of the Complaints Committee, 38 complaints have been filed, out of which 24 have been investigated. It has been decided that the Code of Conduct of Journalists was violated in nine cases: five times by daily newspaper Press, twice by the daily Novosti, and once by Blic and Politika each. It is interesting to notice that journalists and the media have filed six complaints against their colleagues, most often because of violation of copyright. Five of these complaints have been decided in favor of those who filed them and whose articles and photographs were published without crediting their source.
(Danas, Politika, 08.11.2012)

The Complaints Committee of the Press Council says that all print media are obliged to protect the rights and dignity of children, victims of tragedies and all other vulnerable groups, in accordance with the Code of Conduct of Serbian Journalists. The press statement issued by the Committee points out that there is no public interest that would justify revealing the identity of minors in such cases and that journalists and editors have to be aware of that.
(Beta, Politika, 20.11.2012, UNS, 15.11.2012)

The extraordinary high popularity of the programmes “Adulterers”, “Family Secrets” and “The Mad House” has not dropped regardless of the fact that they are all in fact staged and skillfully directed. The Council of the Republic Broadcasting Agency (RRA) has recently ordered TV Pink, TV Happy and TV Prva to stop misleading viewers and clearly label these programmes as fiction, reports the daily Informer.
(Informer, 12.11.2012)

Aleksandar Tijanic recently held a lecture to students of journalism. While his words have been understood correctly by the students themselves, it seems that some critics and media outlets recognized themselves in Tijanic's lecture. “Tabloid politics inevitably leads to tabloid economy, tabloid art, tabloid journalism and eventually tabloid life with viewers watching ten hours of TV programme a day. Without RTS, all daughters would look like Stoja, and all sons like protected witnesses”. Professor Neda Todorovic told the daily Press that the students stayed with Tijanic for one hour after the lecture to talk to him and ask him questions. She points out that a terrible campaign against this lecture has been led by the media, despite the fact that its true content was not known by anyone.
(Press, 12.11.2012,UNS, 13.11.2012)

Awards, events, training courses and competitions

Company Uniqa Insurance announced today a public contest for the best newspaper article or television/radio story on the topic of insurance in 2012. The contest is organized to celebrate six years since the entry of Uniqa to Serbian insurance market and will be held each year.
(Beta, NDNV, 08.11.2012)

A celebration was organized by the Government of Vojvodina to celebrate the Seventh Regional TV Festival of Miniatures Press Vitez 2012. The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to the director of TV B92, Veran Matic, a media professional at the mid-point of his career, while the Press Vitez Monitoring Award for TV Personalities was given to Slavko Beleslin and Katarina Lazarevic from TV B92, as well as Radomir Pocuca from TV Pink.
(Danas, NUNS, 13.11.2012)

The Festival of Visual Communication “Vizid”, organized by the public service broadcaster RTV, was launched at the exhibition “We Are On” aimed at presenting the latest television production in the region. Participants of the Festival – including public service broadcasters from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as advertising agencies – will be presented between 10.00 and 17.30 on the second day of the Festival, which is being held for the first time.
(Dnevnik, 14.11.2012)

The winner of the first award at the competition “Because I Love Danube” is Marko Jakovljev, a journalist with TV Vojvodina. He has been awarded for his story “Inimitable Past” that was broadcast on the programme “Postcards from Novi Sad”.
(UNS, 13.11.2012)

Caricaturist with the daily newspaper Blic, Marko Somborac, is the winner of the award “True Man” (“Pravi Muskarac”).
(24 sata, 19.11.2012)

UNICEF award for professional and ethical reporting on violence against and among children has been given to journalists with Radio Zrenjanin, TV Pirot and daily newspaper Press.
(MC, 20.11.2012)

The media audience

The information about the number of sold copies of daily newspapers in Serbia has been falsified for quite some time, reports the daily newspaper Informer. The newspaper has specific proof for this claim and it will be delivered to the auditing company ABC Serbia next week. There is enough reason for suspicion that the only authorized auditing company in Serbia actually serves only to assist certain publishers and provide them with millions from advertising revenue earned outside free market competition.
(Informer, 07.11.2012)

On Saturday, the daily newspaper Kurir reported that information published on the website of Blic showed that its number of readers was 351,757 in the period January-June 2011, according to data from Ipsos Strategic Marketing, while the number of sold copies was 139,955 in the same period (the stated source of information was the Distribution Department of the newspaper). Soon after that, already on Monday, the information on the website was changed. According to this new information pertaining to the same period January-June 2011, the number of readers of Blic is 939,064, while the number of sold copies is 120,183.
(Kurir, 07.11.2012)

The end is near for the “Media Mafia” which has been robbing Serbian companies for years and deceiving the public, says the daily newspaper Kurir. The companies have been deceived by an elaborate and organized system in which ABC Serbia confirms the deliberately inflated number of sold copies of certain newspapers. This is further supported by Ipsos Serbia, which claims unrealistically high number of readers, while marketing companies use this data to convince their clients to spend millions of euros in these newspapers. Kurir will report everything related to the case to the headquarters of the company ABC, which is based in the US.
(Kurir, UNS, 07.11.2012)

The editorial team of the daily Informer delivered yesterday to the auditing company ABC Serbia documents that prove that some publishers of daily newspapers have been falsifying reports on the number of sold copies of their newspapers.
(Informer, UNS, 09.11.2012)

The print media outlets in Serbia that are not members of ABC should not have any advertisers, because that is the only guarantee of transparent activities and a practice in the EU. Sladjana Jovanovic from the auditing fim Baker Tilly, a company that verifies the data about the circulation of the press, says that ABC Serbia, which audits the circulation of the Serbian press, has been working in accordance with rules that are applied worldwide. She commented on the public speculation that some of the media outlets, in cooperation with ABC, have been falsifying the information about circulation and the number of readers that are crucial to advertisers. It is indicative that such accusations have been made by those media outlets that do not audit their circulation, which are not members of the organization, or which have been thrown out of the organization because they falsified data about the number of sold copies. Srdjan Bogosavljevic, the director of Ipsos Serbia, which has been accused of forging the information about the number of readers, said that no media outlet had been privileged by anyone in any way.
(Blic, NUNS, 08.11.2012)

Ivan Jovanovic says in a newspaper article: “The daily newspaper Kurir is the iron fist of every regime in Serbia. It serves as a tool for attack on political opponents and racketeering of Serbian businessmen. Those who did not want to pay them money ended up on the front page of the tabloid. Kurir has been doing this for years, which is well-known by everyone in the political and economic scene of Serbia.”
(Blic, UNS, 10.11.2012, Blic, NUNS, 13.11.2012)

Rodic's tabloid daily Kurir accused on its cover pages a former minister, Oliver Dulic, of misappropriating money from the Fund for Environmental Protection in order to buy political influence for the benefit of its political party, the Democratic Party (DS). However, Kurir did not tell the public that the newspaper received at least 20 million dinars from Oliver Dulic.
(Blic, 13.11.2012)

The owner of the daily newspaper Informer and supposed fighter against “organized crime” in the media had been hiding for years the fact that Miroslav Miskovic was behind his then newspaper, Press, while during his work for the daily Kurir he was a PR manager of a controversial Albanian businessman.
(Alo!, 14.11.2012)

Despite the claims that the best-known Serbian tycoon has never been his boss, the connection between Dragan J. Vucicevic and the owner of Delta, Miroslav Miskovic, is best evidenced by the newspapers articles written by Vucicevic himself. In an article published in the now already closed-down newspaper Press on 11 September 2010 under the title “Extremists' Satanic Plan”, Vucicevic, who was the president of the Managing Board of the newspaper at the time, clearly defended Miskovic, the then majority owner of Press.
(Alo!, 17.11.2012)

Radisav Rodic, the founder and owner of the tabloid newspaper Kurir, who is lecturing other media outlets on morality, presenting himself as a champion of the freedom of the press, was sentenced to two years in prison on 27 July 2011 for causing a 50 million damage to Komercijalna Banka, says Blic.
(Blic, 14.11.2012)

The owner and publisher of the leading Serbian daily newspaper Blic strongly denies accusations made against the newspaper. Blic will fight this attack with full support from the company Ringier Axel Springer Media AG and its stockholders and will continue to defend European standards of the free press. Reservations that are now exhibited by the governmental and semi-governmental advertisers will not affect this resolve.
(Blic, Fonet, NUNS, 14.11. 2012)

Dragan J. Vucicevic is falsely accused of working as a spokesman for the Albanian businessman Krasnici, says the daily Informer. Our editor-in-chief strongly denies this shameful accusation and intends to immediately file a lawsuit.
(Informer, 14.11.2012)

“Kurirwants a transparent market where skills and hard work will be rewarded instead of shady deals with politicians” says the daily Kurir. “We are fighting for financial independence and freedom of the media because it forms the basis of every democratic society. In Serbia, some of the marketing agencies are powerful enough to influence the editorial policy of the media thanks to their monopoly position”.
(Kurir, 14.11.2012)

The daily newspaper Press was closed down today and it will not be published anymore. As of tomorrow, Press will not be available on newsstands, but the web portal www.pressonline.rs will continue working until further notice. The closure of the newspaper followed several days after the president of Delta Holding, Miroslav Miskovic, announced his withdrawal from the Press. He was the largest individual owner of the newspaper.
(Novi Magazin, NUNS, E-kapija, NDNV, Blic, UNS, 15.11.2012)

The Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS) points out that the closure of the daily Press is the worst possible outcome of the scandal resulting from the hidden ownership over the newspaper. UNS calls on the Government of Serbia to help the journalists find out who their bosses and owners were, and to find a solution to continue publication of the newspaper without the burden of debt.
(UNS, Beta, 15.11.2012)

“Ipsos Strategic Marketing”, a leader in media research in Serbia, improved its measurement of radio stations' ratings in April 2011 by transitioning to continuous monitoring of ratings instead of researching the number of listeners only twice a year. Radio even has a slight advantage as compared to television until 11.00, but after noon the number of television viewers increases constantly, while the number of radio listeners slowly drops. Unlike television, which attracts the largest share of advertisers' money, radio has the strongest position at the local level. Research shows that local and regional radio stations have better ratings than the radio stations with nation-wide coverage – the total weekly audience of local and national radio stations in 2012 was 52% and 41%, respectively, while the average listening time for local and national radio stations was 184 minutes and 162 minutes, respectively, says RAB.
(RAB Serbia Newsletter, 15.11.2012)

Media transfers

The Shareholders' Assembly of NID “Novosti a.d.” has appointed Dr Goran Nikolic, Dr Dijana Vukomanovic, Tatjana Vidojevic, Maja Ninkovic Corac and Srdjan Muskatirovic as members of the Monitoring Board of the company. Dr Goran Nikolic has been appointed as the president of the company.
(Vecernje novosti, UNS, 09.11.2012)

The programme “The Daily Magazine” (“Dnevni Magazin”) will be aired on TV B92 until 15 December, which is the expiration date of the contract with Emotion, its producer.
(Blic, 14.11.2012)

Anniversaries

The only theatrical newspaper in Serbia and the rest of the region, Ludus, will celebrate 20 years of publication by organizing the exhibition “Photographic Fragments of Memory – 20 Years Later”. At the same time, a new issue of the magazine will be promoted, while Ludus Online will be launched at the association's website. The magazine will also get its own Facebook page.
(Blic, Press, 13.11.2012, UNS, 14.11.2012)

Nina Media celebrates its 10-year anniversary by introducing new services and improving the existing ones. The company has launched a new and revolutionary service Buzz Monitor which monitors social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as comments under news items.
(Beta, NDNV, 14.11.2012, Dnevnik, 15.11.2012)

The newspaper Dnevnik, which is the oldest daily newspaper in Serbia after Politika, will celebrate seven decades of its existence on 15 November. Exactly 70 years ago, on 15 November 1942, the first issue of Slobodna Vojvodina – which is a wartime edition of the newspaper whose tradition it legitimately inherited in 1952 – was printed in Novi Sad, in the then Kisacka Street, in the heart of occupied Europe. During these seven decades, 16 writers and five academics have worked for Dnevnik. Eight streets in the city of Novi Sad have been named after the newspaper's journalists.
(NDNV, RTV, Tanjug, UNS, NUNS, 14.11.2012)

Other news

Media associations of Belgrade and Serbia will host the General Assembly of the European Newspaper Publishers' Association (ENPA) on May 23-24. Representatives of national associations of 23 EU countries, as well as the representatives of associations of Norway, Switzerland and Serbia, will participate in activities of ENPA.
(Press, 10.11.2012)

In Memoriam

Milan Zdravkovic, a longtime journalist with the daily newspaper Politika and a member of the Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS), passed away in Belgrade at the age of 78. He was one of the founders of the Association of Automobile Journalists of UNS and the first president of the Forum of Automobile Journalists.
(UNS, 11.11.2012,Politika, 12.11.2012)

Dobrivoje Urosevic, one of most renowned Serbian photographers, passed away in Belgrade at the age of 79. He began his professional career in the field of photography in 1957 working for Politika Ekspres, and soon began one of the leading photojournalists and editors of photography in the daily Politika and other publications issued by the company. He became a member of the Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS) in 1959.
(UNS, 10.11.2012)

A longtime journalist of Dnevnik, Gordana Divljak-Arok, has passed away in Novi Sad after a difficult illness. She was one of the best journalists of the newspaper, and also one of the first female journalists working for Dnevnik.
(Dnevnik, 17.11.2012)