Minister: Journalists Increasingly Behaving Like Political Actors

Dejan RIstic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC)

Minister of Information and Telecommunications Dejan Ristic said on Nov. 14 that journalists in Serbia were increasingly behaving like political actors.

He told the NIN weekly that there were plenty of examples, adding that an awareness of the responsibility for what was said needed to exist. "I will be very frank, we have an entire string of media MPs who are at the same time actors on the political scene [...] Sometimes it is difficult to say when they come out as journalists and when as political actors," Ristic said.

According to him, the ministry did not divide the media into independent and government. "For us there are only registered media outlets of which there are 2,194. In addition to them there are 76 journalistic societies, three (self)regulating bodies and three syndical organizations," Ristic added.

He said that the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications had launched an open dialogue with partners on the media scene in the past six months. He added that the ministry planned on opening all subjects during a dialogue and that there were rights and obligations where the safety of journalists was concerned.