BIRN Serbia Hosts State Media Financing Debate

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BIRN Serbia, together with The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation organised a debate on October 20 about models and transparency of state media financing.

The debate was moderated by BIRN Serbia’s Editor Slobodan Georgiev and hosted Slavisa Lekic, IJAS’s president, Nedim Sejdinovic from the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, Milorad Tadic from the Association of Independent Electronic Media, Dalila Ljubicic from the Media Association and Milos Stojkovic, a legal consultant.

The panellists spoke about the importance of the better regulation of project-based co-funding in the media sector and offered proposals for a new media strategy.

Media content that is created in the public interest needs to be better defined in the new media strategy, they agreed.

They also said that it is important to improve work of the expert commissions for allocating funds by defining the term ‘media expert’.

Talking about the regulatory body for electronic media, the panellists pointed out that it is necessary to minimise or completely eliminate the influence of the executive and legislative authority when members of the regulatory body for electronic media’s council is being elected.

The debate was organized as part of a Public Money for the Public Interest project that BIRN Serbia is implementing with the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation.