June 17, 2019
Media companies in Serbia are finding it increasingly difficult to do their job, with journalists often dubbed “traitors” and “foreign mercenaries”, while President Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian government are following in the footsteps of Hungary and its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, according to the report “Freedom and the media: A Downward Spiral”. Freedom House also adds that there has been a noticeable decline in media freedom since Vučić came to power.
Serbian President Vučić said that the report presented “nothing new”, rather that it was about two texts written on the basis of last year’s report, and that the targets of the report were Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.
Zselyka Csaky, author of the report and Freedom House researcher for this part of the world, reacted to this statement by telling Cenzolovka that these reports are based every year on local analyses “from the field”, stressing that they speak to the extent to which media freedom is being suffocated in Serbia.
