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Serbian Govt Aims to Help Crisis-Hit Media
| 17 April 2009 | Serbia’s Culture Ministry is to form two working groups which will propose urgent measures in order to help Serbian media which is in crisis because of dwindling revenues hit by an economic downturn.
Media experts and Government representatives included in these groups are expected to propose the measures by the end of next week.
The Culture Minister Nebojsa Bradic said the ministry must find a way in which the media can survive the global economic crisis.
At the meeting with media representatives and unions, he said his Ministry received different propositions from the Independent Journalist Association of Serbia, NUNS, and some of them will be considered.
He announced that it is possible that government allows “relaxing advertising conditions” and to make more liberal laws on the advertising of wine and beer. He also said that bringing new laws will not be the only measure in order to help media.
The Culture Ministry will consider a proposition on the liberalisation of tax pay deadlines for the media, and there is also an idea to decrease the taxes that electronic media pay to the Republic Broadcast Agency.
NUNS President Nadezda Gace earlier announced that as soon as the association prepares legal documentation they will create a “journalist’s solidarity fund.”
At the conference entitled “The Media and the Crisis,” Gace explained that journalists will be able to take loans from this fund.
“Many media in Serbia will soon face a catastrophe which will mostly affect journalists. In some media houses they have already stated to fire journalists. Our idea is to create such a fund in order to help journalists, first of all, and then the media houses too,” Gace said.
Source: Balkaninsight
