Media freedom in Serbia: Worse than Chad, slightly better than Madagascar

In a recently published report by Reporters Without Borders, Serbia is behind Zambia, Chad and Tanzania in terms of media freedom, and only slightly better than Madagascar, Kenya or Israel, which killed over a hundred Palestinian journalists during retaliation in Gaza.

Serbia fell by seven places, from a lowly 91st to an even lower 98th place among 180 ranked countries.

In fact, in the annual World Media Freedom Index, of all EU countries or EU candidates, only Albania is ranked worse than Serbia and is in 99th place.

Decline in the progressive era

As Cenzolovka reminds, Serbia has been in an almost continuous free fall on the Reporters World List in the last ten years.

It took 54th place in 2014, after which it fell almost every year, so that in 2024, for the first time, it would fall from the group of countries marked as "problematic" to those whose media freedoms are characterized as "difficult".

"In Serbia, the party in power and the media close to the government have increased the number of attacks on independent journalists," reports Reporters Without Borders. The verdict in the case of the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija was described as a "fiasco".

"All the biggest challenges of previous years are still present. They are systemic. They concern impunity for crimes committed against journalists, non-transparent and biased media regulation," Pavol Salaj said., representative of "Reporters without Borders" for the European Union and the Balkans.

"Also, one of the reasons is the overall political environment - hostile towards journalists." In the past two years, Russian war propaganda has been added to that," added Salaj for the Voice of America.

The usual "suspects" at the top and bottom

As for the region, Kosovo recorded a drop of 19 places, but it is still better than Serbia in the 54th position of the list. The best places are North Macedonia (36) and Montenegro (40).

As usual, the Scandinavian countries, Norway, Denmark and Sweden are at the top of the list. At the very bottom are Eritrea, Syria and Afghanistan.