The Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) protests against the campaign led by tabloids against the responsible editor of the Children’s Program newsroom of RTS, Jelena Popadić Sumić, and calls on them to stop this dangerous practice.
After a boy commented on the student struggle in the last episode of the show “Važne stvari” (“Important Things”), which is broadcast on the public service’s second program, saying that “students are fighting for justice. For our future,” a series of articles were published in Informer and Alo that identified and insulted Jelena Popadić Sumić.
“The series ‘Važne stvari’ consists of authentic statements from children, and in that sense, it is a mirror of the society and the world we live in. This episode, which has been labeled as controversial in the public, was done according to all the professional standards of the series and the rules and protocols of the project’s license, just like all other episodes,” Jelena Popadić Sumić told UNS.
She emphasized that she would “consider any editorial intervention and manipulation of children’s statements to be her professionally unacceptable political act or self-censorship, to which, as a human being and a professional, she does not agree.”
The Editor-in-Chief of the Cultural and Artistic Program of RTS, which includes the Children’s Program, Vladimir Kecmanović, told UNS that it is “his moral obligation to stand in defense of the people from the Cultural and Artistic Program, regardless of which side the attacks on them come from,” and this, as he said, “also applies to defense within RTS.”
UNS stresses that this kind of labeling of journalists is unacceptable and warns that aggressive and inflammatory speech can result in the endangerment of the safety of journalists and media workers, especially at a time of heightened social tensions and pressure on the media.
UNS points out that everyone has the right to be dissatisfied with the work of certain media, and criticism of their work is permissible and desirable, but that insulting, labeling, or obstructing journalists in their work is inadmissible.
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Source: Nova.rs; Photo: AFP