In connection with reactions from journalists, associations of journalists and other entities on the Recommendation on Reporting of the Media on Medicine presented by the Ministry of Health, Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, said it was very important that public authorities and representatives of the Government refrain from actions which cause or may cause a sense of establishing of a censorship or auto-censorship mechanism.
Saying that the duty which journalists have in terms of objective informing is undisputable, the Commissioner emphasized that those responsible for violation of these duties should be held professionally and even legally accountable, but executive authorities should not be dealing with these issues.
In that regard, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:
““Recommendations for Reporting” use formulations such as “a journalist has a duty to” or “shall” or “must” and even such decreeing diction, inappropriate even for the name of the enactment, can provoke reactions from journalists.
More important than the tone is the fact that some of the “recommendations” are essentially hard to accept or are unacceptable. A drastic example is the imposition of a duty on journalists to specify the source of information about which they are writing. Such “recommendation” is contrary to explicit provisions of Serbian Law on Public Information and standards for freedom of the media established by the international documents which Serbia signed. The European Court of Human Rights emphasized in a number of its rulings that protection of journalists’ sources is one of the main preconditions for freedom of press which should reflect in laws and codes of professional conducts of State Parties and that without such protection sources can be discouraged from providing assistance to the press, which can undermine the ability of the press to provide both official and correct and reliable information.
It not good that the text of recommendations deals exclusively with journalists’ liability for reporting and it does not deal at all with the liability of the competent authorities for the same thing. Journalists’ right to receive information also on a proactive basis is not mentioned at all in the recommendations although proactive publishing of information is a legal duty of public authorities. It is highly unusual and indicative that even though the recommendations address both reporting on information of public importance and protection of privacy, the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection are not mentioned at all in them, although these laws set standards or duties of the government in the light of which some of the “recommendations” seem rather controversial.
Recommendations (in)directly backed by executive authorities in general, and the proposed recommendations in particular, cannot contribute to higher quality of provision of information to the public. Insisting on them can only cause additional, completely unnecessary problems”.
