On World Press Freedom Day, Serbian journalist groups stressed the worsening financial position of media outlets and journalists in Serbia and called on politicians and media outlet owners to help create the right conditions for journalists to do their job.

The Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia, the Nezavisnost media union, the Association of Journalists of Serbia and the Union of Journalists of Serbia called on the authorities to shed light on the murder of journalists and improve conditions for media outlets, which it said had suffered a bad economic blow.

The Independent Journalists Association and the Nezavisnost union said that solving journalist murders, safeguarding the professional, work and economic rights of journalists, support for investigative journalism and ensuring fair conditions on the media market were key conditions for the freedom of the press in Serbia.

The Association of Journalists of Serbia and the Union of Journalists of Serbia warned that the media in Serbia had not seen worse days since the change of government on Oct. 5, 2000.

The Independent Society of Journalists of Vojvodina warned that today on International Press Freedom Day, the media scenes in Serbia and Vojvodina were totally devastated, journalists were endangered by various kinds of threats while media outlets were still far from free and independent.

The organization said that the media scene was still ruled by nationalism which had become the default model for treating reality, i.e. that the scene was still dominated by xenophobia, rigidness, censorship and self-censorship, sensationalism and the discrimination of minority and non-mainstream groups.