Regional Podcast: Officials Must Be Accountable to the Public

The role of media outlets is to hold public officials accountable, as those officials are ultimately accountable to the citizens—the very people who have given them the mandate to make important decisions for the public good, was the conclusion of the AKCIJA CDT podcast .

Journalist and program author for the Television of Montenegro, Ivana Popović, in response to a question about the openness and transparency of the Government, said that it is necessary to change certain bad practices, such as those in which journalists had to wait for hours for a press conference.

“It is unacceptable for someone to tell journalists ‘we didn’t call you (to come)’. The journalist’s job is to find out, our obligation is to be there, to be at the place where something is happening. Let’s wait for those ministers to come out, maybe someone will make a statement, maybe not, but it is the journalist’s responsibility to wait for some information,” said Popović.

She added that she believes that government sessions should be open to the public, which would greatly facilitate the work of journalists, and as she said, it would also mean that after every government session we have a press conference so that journalists can ask anything they are interested in.

Popović specifically addressed the cooperation of journalists with ministries.

“As for the ministries, we have different experiences, some ministries are quite open, we get information on the same day, while we cannot even receive a written response from certain institutions, these are the problems we face. Ministers change, directors of certain institutions change, but these problems remain,” she added.

ND Vijesti Editor-in-Chief Mihailo Jovović said that it is one thing to have an image, and another to have the essence of what politicians and public officials want to hide.

Jovović said that above all, it is the duty of journalists to find out what is really happening, even when politicians and public officials do not want to answer questions, and journalists must have good contacts and connections, but also be careful and additionally check all the information they receive.

“If politicians or public officials think that there will be no stories, at least as far as we are concerned, because they do not answer questions, there will certainly be stories, but it is in their interest to hear their point of view. Maybe if they answer the journalist’s questions, the story will be different, because maybe the journalist does not know the other side, maybe they did not manage to get that information, that is why it is in their interest to answer the questions, to appear in public. This is how it is done in developed democracies where there is responsibility and public opinion that calls for responsibility if something happens,” said Jovović.

Speaking about the openness and transparency of the Government, he said that his impression is that the ministers from the ruling parties or the majority of them look exclusively at party interests and that there is no common communication strategy of the Government, because this has not been noticed.

Other forms of communication, the principle of (non)response is the same

Popović also questioned the way public officials communicate via social networks, emphasizing that he understands that this is an extenuating circumstance for certain politicians, but said that, for example, television journalists remain deprived of the statements that are necessary for that media format.

Jovović said that he also sees the fault in this way of communication on the part of journalists who only convey information about politicians from social networks.

“You need to put all the things you write about in some context. Why did the person say that, what does it mean… It’s not about being the first to report it, because anyone can do that, but the thing is that journalists have accustomed politicians to such things. Why communicate with journalists, when they can tweet, journalists report it, no one asks politicians, they won’t answer,” said Jovović.

He added that politicians have always tried to hide what they don’t do well or what they don’t do at all, while at the same time trying to impose some of their stories in which they turn out to be “good guys.”

“Normal governments have spokespersons who can say what is written in the statement. We should not be reinventing the wheel, but taking the experiences of governments that are transparent and that communicate regularly and transparently with the public and apply that here,” he added.

He cited the Secretariat-General of the Government of Montenegro, the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation of Montenegro, and the former government of Igor Lukšić as positive examples of ways of communicating with media outlets.

The interlocutors on the CDT podcast called on their colleagues to make more use of the Law on Free Access to Information. They pointed out that journalists in this field also face many problems, that they are demotivated due to the long wait for answers, that certain stories “fade into the background”, but they also pointed out that it is essential to be persistent in the search for information and that this persistence pays off in the end.

Even in the region, official information is difficult to come by.

Kristina Kalajdžić from Partners-Serbia, Amina Izmirlić Ćatović from Zašto ne, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Meri Jordanovska from the Metamorphosis Foundation from North Macedonia spoke about how difficult it is for journalists and civil society representatives from the region to reach officials and obtain information about the work of the Government.

Excerpt from the podcast

Jordanovska said that the situation in North Macedonia is similar to Montenegro.

“Transparency does not only mean publishing information from daily meetings, but also responding to journalistic questions in a timely manner.”

Izmirlić Ćatović said that the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina willingly provides information to media outlets and the non-governmental sector if that information serves to promote the work of the Government.

“However, when more serious information is requested about spending money, salaries, employment, public procurement, then the Government acts as if it were some kind of private information. Any critical approach to the government is not welcome, and insults to journalists are not rare,” she added.

Speaking about the situation in Serbia, Kalajdžić said that the institutions there are completely closed to media outlets that do their job professionally and actually want to review the work of the institutions.

“We can see the attitude at media conferences where the highest state officials belittle journalists whose work they disagree with,” Kalajdžić said.

The podcast is part of the project “Using New Media to Promote Government Transparency” funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and implemented by the Center for Democratic Transition – CDT (Montenegro), Metamorphosis Foundation (North Macedonia), Partners for Democratic Change Serbia (Serbia), and Why Not? (Bosnia and Herzegovina). The content is the sole responsibility of the Center for Democratic Transition and does not necessarily reflect the views of the donors.

Link to the original post in Montenegrin: Funkcioneri dužni da polažu račune javnosti » CDT (cdtmn.org)

Share: