The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection expressed his concern at the fact that the Basic Public Prosecutor in the city of Novi Sad indicted the journalists of the "Nacionalni gradjanski" daily newspapers for the alleged disclosure of a secret.

While stating that many individuals with good reason would consider this action of the Prosecution as the infringement on the freedom of the press and the right of the public to know and be informed, the Commissioner warned that, if there is a reason for that, the responsible for the revelation of the secret should be sought among state officials and personnel.

In this regard, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also stated the following:

"With all due respect to the autonomy of the Prosecution, I believe it is my duty to warn of the fact that this indictment could lead to some very disturbing conclusions with regards to the freedom of the press and the right of the public to know and be informed.

While doing their job, the journalists wrote about the bad state of certain defense resources and cited actual data from the document that was marked as confidential.

If another, more positive approach was taken to what the journalists were doing, a conclusion would have been made that they were trying to give their contribution towards the removal of shortcomings and the improvement of resources, and not do something negative.

However, regardless of the aforementioned, it is obvious that they are not the ones responsible for the disclosure of the secret. The content of the document, which was, for a valid reason or lack thereof, marked as confidential, was disclosed by someone else, a person acting in an official capacity. While the journalists, even if they knew who the person was, according to the current legislation, are not obliged to disclose their source of information.

That is why I repeat, insisting on the responsibility of the journalists, especially when the responsibility of others is not sought, those who are truly responsible, regardless of the intentions of the Prosecution, will have a detrimental effect to the freedom of the press and the right of the public to know and be informed."