The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection considers as absolutely correct and supports the attitude of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) that it is unacceptable that journalists or the media which correctly reported on the content of announcements or documents made by public authorities pay fines or indemnification because they allegedly dishonoured and defaced somebody.

Expressing his opinion that the possibility of such punishment is tantamount to indirect censorship and that by causing justified concerns for owners or editors of the media it also activates auto-censorship mechanisms, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:

"The task of journalists and the media is to inform the public. When they do this in good faith, without intention to insult or libel anyone, transferring information for which they have reasons to believe are true, it is unacceptable that they bear any responsibility. Their punishing in such circumstances cannot be compliant with the freedom of expression and freedom of media standards enshrined in the Serbian Constitution, European Convention on Human Rights and other relevant documents.

In this day and age, a normal relation of public authorities towards the public implies that public authorities publish as many as possible pieces of information about their operations and in connection with their operations themselves, on proactive basis. There is even a legal duty to publish a significant part of such data.

It is quite normal that public authorities themselves are responsible for the quality of execution of their social and legal duties towards the public. They must ensure the correctness of information published and the public should have the right to rely on the correctness of it.

In case public announcements or documents made by public authorities or statements made by officials in their official capacity are not true and they in any way dishonoured or defaced somebody or any other good protected by the law, the responsibility must exclusively be borne by public authorities and civil servants or officials themselves. Punishing of journalists or the media because they quite naturally believed the information published by public authorities was correct is not only unjust, but also completely counter-productive."