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Over the past twenty years the Danas daily has
been staunchly standing for democratic values and resisting all
forms of authoritarianism, media manipulation and degradation of
public communication. The paper played a major role in the
democratic transition in the 2000s, it has distanced itself
beginning from any regime since and has been doing its best to
timely and fairly inform its readership about all relevant issues of
the society.
The paper has proved itself to be – and not only
symbolically – the true counterpoint to most dailies in Serbia,
launched in problematic processes of privatization and
commercialization: most of those media are tabloid press, totally
uncritical about any regime and disinterested in digging deeper into
any social or political problematic.
The Danas daily in one of the few media in Serbia
respecting and supporting, from the very beginning, the activity of
the country’s civil sector and thus providing visibility to domestic
non-governmental organizations. It stands out at the media scene
with its pages open to the sensitive issue of facing the past,
reminding the society of war crimes and Serbia’s unwillingness to
acknowledge its responsibility for the wars in the 1990s.
Because of its policy of a highly professional,
objective and critical daily paper, Danas has usually been in
disgrace with political-financial centers of power that occasionally
subject it to open pressure threatening its very survival. In the
past year that pressure was mostly manifest in the paper’s practical
ostracism from the marketing scene.
The waves of popular criticism and dissatisfaction
with the present regime flooding the streets all over the country
this spring stirred up interest in the Danas daily. The paper now
has the opportunity to attract new readership, mostly among the
young. The paper’s editors and journalists have readily met this new
challenge and are now doing all in their power to meet the
expectations of their readers. What they badly need now, however,
are more correspondents from local communities in protest or with
pressing problems and yet another daily issue, all of which is far
beyond the paper’s financial means.
Ever since 2012 Danas has practically been
constantly on the regime’s hit list, it has been fined and driven
away from the market of advertising by the agencies directly or
indirectly controlled by governmental institutions, i.e. the ruling
coalition. It is common knowledge that no daily paper can possibly
survive without advertisements.
Bearing in mind Danas’ role and significance, we,
the undersigned, appeal to all donors to help survive this daily
paper – one in the handful of truly free and professional media in
today’s Serbia – through the programs and models that used to help
to preserve journalistic dignity and ensure the freedom of
expression in the 1990s.
Kuća ljudskih prava i demokratije
Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji
Komitet pravnika za ljudska prava – YUCOM
Beogradski centar za ljudska prava
Građanske inicijative
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