Journalists’ Associations Demand Line Ministry’s Urgent Response to Campaign against Journalist Tamara Skrozza

Tamara Skrozza (BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC/MO)

Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS) and Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) on July 30 demanded from the Information and Telecommunications Ministry to urgently respond to organized campaign of maligning and targeting Tamara Skrozza, a journalist of news agency FoNet, and in line with its powers inspect compliance with the Law on public information and media.

In the morning on July 29, portals informer.rs and novosti.rs published an almost identical unsigned article, while in the afternoon TV Pink aired a report accusing Skrozza of saying that “(Serbian) President (Aleksandar) Vucic should have been murdered in the night between Oct. 5 and 6, 2000,” in a broadcast on TV Nova titled “Da sam ja neko (If I Were Someone).”

NUNS has dismissed the reports specifying that Skrozza’s statement that “the night should have been different,” has been taken out of context, stressing that Skrozza did not even mention President Aleksandar Vucic, “let alone called for his murder.”

The very sequence of publishing articles and TV reports and false accusations had yet again shown that it was an orchestrated campaign, NUNS said, adding that “this type of targeting Tamara Skrozza is a typical example of exerting pressure on independent media outlets and creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.”

UNS described as “inadmissible and dangerous” the accusations which the pro-regime media outlets had been for two days making against journalist Tamara Skrozza. The association said that unfounded accusations could trigger violence against Skrozza and her family and that this type of campaigns would only further aggravate the already difficult position and undermine safety of journalists in Serbia.