Serbian Tabloid Reporting on Rape Case Disgusts Public
Many Serbs have taken to social networks to express deep dissatisfaction with graphic front-page tabloid accounts of a rape crime involving a 12-year-old girl, while journalists' associations have also called on the authorities to act.
The reports in question were published on Thursday in Informer and Srpski Telegraf, and were based on alleged leaks from the police and prosecution hearings in the case.
They included a picture of the blood-stained alleged culprit - who admitted to the crime after being arrested on January 5 near Nis in southern Serbia following a 17-day manhunt.
One Twitter user, addressing the Serbian President, said if there was real "rule of law, the complete circulation [of the two tabloids] would be withdrawn from kiosks by order of the prosecution". Another said that it was shameful that the authors of these reports received salaries for such work.
The head of the opposition Freedom and Justice Party, Dragan Djilas, called the tabloids "monsters that are destroying the life of a child and her family". He said that anyone "normal" would want to pull the issues from newsstands and so have "a bit of humanity within themselves". However, Djilas himself was criticised for publishing a picture of the tabloid front pages as an illustration in his tweet.
The Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia, NUNS, said that both Informer and Srpski Telegraf should be sanctioned. It urged "the prosecutor's office to take appropriate sanctions against these tabloids because they have grossly violated the Law on Public Information and Media, which stipulates that 'a description of the scene of violence in the media or media content must not violate the dignity of the victim of the violence,'...
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