Human Rights Action (HRA) is pleased to announce that the Appellate Court upheld earlier judgment of the Basic Court in Podgorica ordering the state of Montenegro, as the founder of JSC Pobjeda, to secure that this daily publishes a response submitted to it by HRA on 10 September 2013.

The final judgment provides that Pobjeda must publish HRA’s response within three days. Eventhough articles written by Stevan Lilić, President of the Board of Directors of NGO Public Policy Institute, that the submitted response referred to, were published nine months ago – in early September last year, and the law ordered urgent processing of the case, HRA nevertheless considers this verdict an important step in the struggle for the respect of human rights in Montenegro.

The right to objective information, which entails the obligation of media to respect the right of reply of the other party in a public debate, in accordance with the Media Act and Code of Ethics, also binds Pobjeda, a media outlet majority-owned by the state, whose actions are also the state’s responsibility.

HRA tried on several occasions to exercise the right of reply by directly addressing the Editorial Board of Pobjeda and Mr. Srđan Kusovac, the then editor-in-chief. We have also addressed the Media Council for Self-Regulation, that Pobjeda is a member of, which concluded that Pobjeda Editorial Board breached the Code by failing to publish HRA’s response, and also because the Board even decided to publish Mr. Lilić’s response to our, unpublished, response.

In this case Pobjeda clearly favoured one NGO (Public Policy Institute) as opposed to another (HRA) and demonstrated extreme bias. By publishing professor Lilić’s attack on HRA, while denying the right of the called out party to respond, with obvious intention to harm the reputation of our organization, Pobjeda has primarily brought into question its own reputation as well as the reputation of its founder, the state of Montenegro.