REM Monitors 11 TV Channels, Council Never Met on Campaign
REM has monitored 11 television channels since September 10, but Council member Rodoljub Sabic says the body hasn't held even a preliminary meeting on the October 25 election campaign.
Serbia’s Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) officially launched monitoring of election campaign content at noon on September 10, running around the clock across 11 television channels. REM Council chair Dubravka Valic Nedeljkovic confirmed this to N1. That same day, September 11, Council member Rodoljub Sabic told the newspaper Nova something quite different: that the Council has not held so much as a preliminary meeting on the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 25.
The monitoring covers Radio Television of Serbia’s First and Second programs, Radio Television of Vojvodina’s First and Second programs, as well as Pink, Prva, B92 and Hepi, plus the cable channels N1, Nova S and K1. It follows the methodology the REM Council adopted in 2023, adapted to this year’s campaign. Because it relies on the 2023 list, it does not cover any outlet that was not on that list at the time, Informer among them.
What Exactly Is Being Monitored
Valic Nedeljkovic described the coding protocol as far from simple.
The coding protocol for monitoring is very complex, it covers news programming, documentary programming and debate programming. Attention is paid to content marked as “election campaign,” but campaigning by officials is also logged.
She said the goal is a report that will accurately capture what the pre-election atmosphere in the media looked like. She also noted that until a Council chairperson is elected, the body will not be able to respond daily to breaches of the code of ethics or the law. Complaints and identified violations will only be reviewed once the Council has a chairperson and moves into its full, operational format.
Sabic: No Session, No Meeting
Sabic argues that monitoring the election campaign is one of REM’s “fundamental obligations,” yet the body has not even discussed it so far.
No sessions on the subject of the election campaign have been held so far, nor has there been a preliminary meeting.
He says he and three other Council members will push for such a meeting to take place, though he expects resistance.
The resources exist, there is a professional service that can organize and carry out (election campaign monitoring). We will insist that the monitoring be carried out and that its results be made available promptly, completely, accurately and on time, both to you (the media) and to the wider public, domestic and foreign alike.
Sabic also explained the division of labor within REM: the professional service technically carries out the monitoring, while the Council would need to step in whenever campaign rules are breached. That, he says, is not currently possible.
That is not possible at this moment, but what is possible is for us to talk about it openly, to point it out to the public, and we will certainly do that.
A third Council member, Milos Garic, told the FoNet agency on September 4 that the chances of a Council chairperson being elected soon are “very slim.”
Eight of Nine Members, No Chair
By law, the REM Council has nine members, but currently has eight. Missing is the representative elected through the councils of national minorities, whose selection the Assembly’s Committee on Culture and Information had not initiated as of June 25, pending elections for new compositions of those councils. Three constitutive sessions have been held so far, but without consensus on electing a chairperson and deputy chairperson. Some members believe the Council cannot make operational decisions without a chairperson, while Sabic and the other three members argue that the campaign should be discussed regardless of that election.
REM has also yet to issue binding instructions to broadcasters on running the campaign, which are meant to set out how paid airtime must be labeled, how campaign rallies are covered, under what conditions ads may air, and to remind broadcasters that discrimination is prohibited. REM’s professional service can technically carry out monitoring without those instructions, but sanctions for breaching campaign rules still fall under the Council’s authority, the same body that, according to Sabic, has not yet even discussed the campaign.
We previously reported on the election process when the organization Crta announced it would send 2,500 observers to the October 25 vote. Whether the REM Council gets a chairperson before that date, or monitoring the campaign stays solely the professional service’s job right up to the election itself, is still an open question.
