Some employees of Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV)*** held a one-hour strike during which they presented demands to the director, including demands concerning the conduct of the provincial public broadcaster during the pre-election campaign.***
President of the Independent Trade Union of Culture, Arts and Media “Nezavisnost” Darko Šper said during the gathering that it is important for management, editors and journalists to respect the laws and the Journalists’ Code of Ethics during the pre-election campaign.
He added that the task of employees at a public media service is not to choose the authorities for citizens, but to enable them to make their own choice.
“The public service is not there to campaign for anyone, but to enable citizens to make their own choice. RTV is not anyone’s private television station. RTV is a public media service. This means that our first obligation is to the citizens who finance us and have the right to be informed truthfully, fully, promptly and impartially,” Šper said.
According to him, during an election campaign, a public service must provide citizens with information on the basis of which they can make free decisions.
At the gathering, management was asked to stop favoring any political option and to stop subordinating editorial policy to political interests.
“Stop favoring the authorities. Stop turning the public service into a space where those in power are presented without a critical stance, while different voices are marginalized, shortened, ignored or pushed aside. Respect the law, the public interest and the citizens who finance this public service,” Šper said.
He said that responsibility lies not only with directors and editors, but also with journalists themselves, who, he added, must not accept censorship.
“A journalist must not agree to facts being withheld because they are politically inconvenient for someone. A journalist must not be the megaphone of any political party. Our job is to enable citizens to form their own opinions,” Šper said.
He also said that when a journalist refuses to publish what is politically acceptable and instead publishes what is important to the public, they are not working against RTV, but defending it.
Today, the union once again demanded an increase in the basic salary, regulation of working hours, and the urgent signing of an annex to the collective agreement and salary coefficient tables, which, they said, director Goran Karadžić has been ignoring for several months.
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Source: Nova.rs, Foto: N1
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