Ustavno pravo vlasti da osniva medije?
Do the Public Authorities have the Constitutional Right to Set the Media Up?

With a Particular Focus on the Media Set Up by the Local Authorities

Summary/Abstract: (1) Preparation of the new media laws in Serbia in 2013 provided an opportunity to see how much media professionals, their legal advisors and authorities have failed to accept the idea that public authorities neither should set up nor fund the media. (2) The author first analyzes whether the provision of the law that entitles local authorities to set media up is in force or not. He warns of the collision between the norms that allow it and the norms that prohibit it, demonstrating that the above-mentioned conflict cannot be solved equivocally in any of the 3 manners of application of the collision norms he presents in the paper. (3) Draft Law on Public Information and Media from 2013 proposes the privatization of media of local authorities and prohibition of future setting up of media by the local authorities. The author disputes the claims that such provisions are contrary to Serbia’s Constitution from 2006. He points out that views that Constitution guarantees the right to set media up to everyone, including the local authorities, that have been put forth by number of lawyers, are essentially a laymen’s interpretation: Such an interpretation is reduced to mere linguistic interpretation of the word „everyone“, used in the Constitution, in a colloquial manner! The author maintains that such an interpretation is intrinsically at fault, as the freedom of expression of opinion, which encompasses the right to set the media up, is a basic human right. He further maintains that such freedoms and rights are guaranteed to individuals and not to public authorities, since such rights are conceived as individual’s protection against public authorities.

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