RTS and Kosovo Online Denied Entry to Kosovo Assembly

Reporters from Serbia’s public broadcaster RTS and the Kosovo Online news portal were turned away from the Kosovo Assembly building in Pristina on August 6, the day of its constitutive session. According to the Union of Journalists of Serbia (UNS), both newsrooms had submitted the required accreditation paperwork in advance, yet staff at the entrance told them they were not on the list of accredited media.

For the RTS crew, the only explanation offered was that the paperwork had been filed on time. Journalists from both outlets were stopped at the same spot, in front of the building, on the very day the session was scheduled.

UNS, which also has a branch in Kosovo, protested the same day and called on the Assembly to allow unobstructed work for every newsroom reporting in the Serbian language. Its statement said that restricting journalists’ work violates a right guaranteed under both local regulations and international conventions.

“Restricting journalists’ work violates the right to information,” UNS said in its statement.

A Request Filed in January, Answered in August

Kosovo Online filed its first accreditation request in January 2026. When no decision had been made by mid year, the newsroom repeated the request in July. It says it contacted the relevant offices several times in between, asking for an update on the status of its application, but received no answer.

The timeline is short and runs in three steps:

• January 2026, Kosovo Online submits its first accreditation request
• July 2026, the request is repeated after the first one goes unresolved
• August 6, 2026, journalists from both outlets are turned away at the Assembly’s entrance

Why Weren’t the Accreditations Issued?

The only answer the newsroom received was that issuing an accreditation requires the signature of the Assembly’s secretary general. No one explained why that signature was missing, nor was any deadline given for when the matter might be resolved.

The newsroom approached the Assembly’s director for media, Musli Krasniqi, who, it says, refused to meet with them, and the office of the acting secretary general, Ferida Podvorica. A day earlier, that office had told them the secretary general would be informed of the case, and they got the same answer on the day of the session itself. Asked whether their journalists would be allowed inside, the response was brief: “Not today.”

What the Journalists’ Associations Are Demanding

Ivana Vanovac, president of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo and Metohija, called the denial of accreditation to Kosovo Online and RTS unacceptable. In her assessment, institutions in Pristina treat media reporting in the Serbian language with disregard.

Milena Maksimovic, a Kosovo Online journalist, told UNS that this is not the first time Pristina institutions have ignored her newsroom’s accreditation request. UNS notes in its statement that this is not the first instance of Serbian language media being barred from reporting out of Kosovo’s institutions, and it is demanding an end to the practice.

Why the Issue Extends Beyond One Session

The demand UNS has raised is not about a single day. Accreditation for the Assembly building is not a one time pass, it is a condition for covering every session that follows, including ones the new convocation has yet to schedule. As long as the signature is missing, the two newsrooms remain outside the building even when a session’s agenda has nothing to do with the reason they were turned away in the first place.

By both newsrooms’ account, the entire matter has stalled at a single point, a signature whose absence no one has explained. That is an administrative step, not a judgment on the content of their reporting, so a deadline for resolving it could reasonably be set. Seven months after the first request, that has not happened.