Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Mr. Rodoljub Sabic appealed today to the editors of all printed and electronic media to observe the elementary standards of privacy and personal data protection in their reporting on events and people. Recalling that these standards are codified not only in the Law on Personal Data Protection, but also in the Code of Ethics of Serbian Journalists, the Commissioner warned that their frequent disregard and violation was unacceptable.
In this regard, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said:
“The media very often tend to violate privacy or a person’s right to personal data protection. In the last few days alone we have witnessed three events which explicitly confirmed this.
The family of a well-known female journalist of the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation was practically forced by a surge of information and fabrications regarding her illness in several media to make a public appeal for respect of their right enshrined in the law.
In the context of political controversies around the (non-)construction of a new sports hall in the city of Nis, the names of several persons who were deemed “responsible” for this, together with their personal mobile phone numbers, appeared on Facebook.
The third, rather brutal, violation of privacy occurred when an article reporting on negotiations concerning industrial action of judicial administration workers disclosed a number of details on criminal activities and sentencing of the (then under-age) son of a trade union representative.
By sheer coincidence, these events occurred at the time when the EU Council of Ministers decided to finally forward Serbia’s membership application to the European Commission. In this context, it should be recalled that by signing the Stabilization and Association Agreement some years ago, we assumed the obligation that “Serbia shall harmonize its legislation on personal data protection with acquis communitaire and other European and international privacy regulations...”
Apart from enactment of new legislation, this obligation also implies observance of standards set out therein in real everyday life. These recent events show that, in practice, we are indeed “many light years away” from this and that we should, as soon as possible and without any delays, take action to redress the current practice and introduce a better one. The media, of course, will have to accept their share of this burden.”
