Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Rodoljub Sabic has today, in the letters sent to the Chairmen of the Association of Journalists of Serbia (Udruzenje novinara Srbije  - UNS), Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (Nezavisno udruzenje novinara Srbije – NUNS) and of Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina (Nezavisno drustvo novinara Vojvodine – NDNV), congratulated the 3^rd May, the World Media Freedom Day, to the journalists in Serbia. The Commissioner has sent to the journalists the best wishes for success in work and confirmed readiness and obligation to help them in achieving their important social function. Stressing the big importance of journalists and media in a democratic society, the Commissioner has evaluated that it is necessary for the state to do many more things in the plan for creating preconditions for exercising that role.

In relation to that, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, also stated the following:

„It is good that the journalists and media are increasingly referring to the rights from the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, placing it in the function of informing the widest public. But regardless of the progress, there are still many problems and it is high time that responsibility mechanisms shall be finally seriously activated for infringing the Law.

According to the proclaimed principles of transparency in the work of the government, and of e-government, the government owes to the public making much more information available in the easiest way, by public presentation of available databases and on Internet. We can’t be satisfied with the existing level of electronic communication between our government and the public, classifying us near to the bottom of the European ladder, which must be changed as quickly as possible.

It is necessary to fully eliminate all mechanisms of implicit censorship, and the space for acting of journalists and of media should be, both legally and factually harmonized with the principles determined in Article 10 of the European Human Rights Charter.

Finally, the state must make it undisputable that it is its priority obligation to secure the journalists elementary personal safety, as well as to punish those violating it. Cases in which several years after the death of a journalist the public does not know whether and what have the authorities done on that base are permanently disturbing, and it is of utter importance both because of the past and even more so because of the future for the authorities to transparently resolve them.“