March 16, 2020
Mihajlo Gligorić, a journalist of local weekly Pančevac from Pančevo, has been dismissed just half a year after he was first fired by the newspaper’s owner, in September 2019, and then allowed to return to work in October.
It was in August last year that Gligorić was fired, after 30 years of service for the Pančevo-based weekly, allegedly for refusing to attend a psychiatric examination. His employment status was restored three days after an article about the case was published by Cenzolovka.
The new decision to dismiss this journalist, brought on 2nd March this year, is based on a different reason. Forming the basis for the cancelling of his employment contract is a letter written by Pančevac editor-in-chief Aleksandar Živković, which states that Gligorić doesn’t submit articles covering topics agreed upon during editorial meetings, that his pieces are not long enough, that his journalism reports fail to meet the requirements for publication and contain inaccurate information.
Gligorić dismisses these allegations, claiming that they are false and explaining that he was tasked with writing articles that are impossible to write, while statistics showing that he had far less effect than other journalists were extracted by force. He adds that there was no room for personal initiative regarding the proposing of topics, because work tasks were – as he states – determined by the editor.
