BETA: No Questions for Regular Press Conferences

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The Beta News Agency has not been sending any questions for the Crisis Headquarters’ regular press conferences for several days now. We will continue with this practice as long as the conditions under which the conferences are organized remain unchanged, i.e. until the possibility for the journalists to participate directly in them is ensured.

Since the Crisis Headquarters is still the basic source of information on the state of affairs in the country, we will continue to carry the information announced at these conferences. As it is necessary for the citizens to be informed timely and accurately, however, we will also continue to use other channels for finding answers to the issues of public interest.

We would also like to point out that in our view the Crisis Headquarters members are not the ones to decide which questions are “political” and which are not. It is common practice that journalists ask questions (and, which is especially important, sub-questions), while it is up to officials to answer them or not. The public is the one to ultimately judge whether it is in its interest to hear the answer or not.

Since so far the journalists and media have been receiving only general and insufficient answers to their inquiries, we urge all media associations to help devise models that will enable the public to gain insight into the questions posed by the media to which no adequate answers are being given, as well as into the explanation of the reasons why such questions are actually being asked.

Our basic goal is to inform the public of the events of public interest accurately, promptly and comprehensively, and this is now greatly hindered, as we have been deprived of the opportunity to pose sub-questions. This is why we must not allow for the officials’ statements to be reduced to bureaucratic formulations, as they frequently are, and from which the public cannot gain a clear insight into the matters it is interested in.