The Media Council for Self-Regulation strongly condemns the threats addressed to the editor-in-chief of TV E, Draško Đuranović. We demand from the Police Administration and the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica to immediately identify the person who threatened Đuranović's life, and to treat that act as a threat to security, and not as an incident of lower intensity that is resolved as a misdemeanor or allowed to expire.
We also request that the prosecutor's office, if procedurally necessary, without delay initiate the mechanisms of international legal assistance in order to obtain information about the order from which the threat was sent. The anonymity of an account on a foreign platform must not become an alibi for inaction. It was precisely with this excuse that the largest number of online threats to journalists ended without any epilogue.
This case has one specificity - the threat addressed to Đuranović is not an expression of anger or disagreement. It is conditioned. In the threat posted in a comment on the YouTube channel, the final words of the message, "just keep on going", establish a direct connection between the threat of deprivation of life and the continuation of his public and professional activities. In other words, the message does not challenge what has been said, but rather asks to stop talking. It is not a reaction to the content, but a request for silence, and it must be treated as such in the investigation. "How will you be executed", which the user of the platform stated in the threat cannot be defined as criticism or strong disagreement, but it is a clearly expressed threat to life.
Journalists who have been threatened do not forget the threat, as the public usually does after its publication and the reaction of media bodies and institutions. They continue to live with it no matter what. No media worker should be doing his job with that burden on his/her head.
The reason for the threat was the author's comment. It is a journalistic genre expressly recognized and protected by the Code of Journalists of Montenegro, provided that it is clearly separated from information, which is not disputed here.
Television E is a member of the Media Council for Self-Regulation. This means that it voluntarily accepted the Code of Journalists and the jurisdiction of the Complaints Commission. It also means that anyone who believes that the professional standard was violated by that comment was open to appeal - free of charge, without a lawyer, without a court and without risk. That mechanism exists so that disagreement with media content would have a civilized outcome. Whoever instead chooses the threat of deprivation of life is not looking for correction or responsibility, but intimidation. Institutions that decide on this case must see this difference and take it into account.
It is also worrisome that the threat appeared in response to a comment about the attitude of the holders of the highest state positions towards a legally convicted war criminal. When the relativization of convicted crimes becomes normalized in public discourse, journalists who name it systematically become a target. The consequence is not only that the safety of the individual is threatened. The consequence is the self-censorship of the entire profession around topics that are most important to society. And it seems that they can cost a journalist dearly.
We expect that the competent authorities will not repeat the practice of cases that have burdened the journalistic community's trust in institutions for years, in which the perpetrators remained unidentified or unsanctioned even when they were known. Each such outcome lowers the threshold for subsequent threats.
Media Council for Self-Regulation
