On February 27, the Austrian Chairmanship of the OSCE held a high-level conference on Freedom of the Media in the Western Balkans, at Hofburg in Vienna.

The following is the address at the conference of Veran Matic, head of Serbia’s Commission for the Investigation of Murders of Journalists and news editor-in-chief for B92:

I believe that we witness the biggest journalism and media crisis ever. The challenges in front of us keep getting bigger and more complicated. Hate speech on the global level and in the highly developed countries resembles legitimacy of hate speech at the beginning of bloody breakdown of former Yugoslavia. Lies are being legalized through “alternative facts”, while threats and violence towards journalists and the media in general gets more complex, jeopardizing journalistic freedom, hovering over it as a malicious cloud.

This is what makes those conferences and institutions that organize such events so significant. It is very encouraging that Austrian OSCE Chairmanship had chosen safety of journalists as one of its main issues. However, I have to notice quite big problems OSCE faces when it comes to the freedom of media.

http://www.b92.net/eng/insight/pressroom.php?yyyy=2017&mm=03&nav_id=100726