Press Release – Media Freedom Day and the obligation to take power around the media

BOSS President Mirnes Ajanović congratulates all media workers on Media Freedom Day, because media freedom is extremely important in creating social and political standards. It is extremely important to enable the media to act objectively and professionally, because due to the difficult financial situation, most media cannot act independently, and the abuse of the media in creating political standards must be prevented. This has become especially radical over the past two years, when most media outlets have become complicit in brutal human rights violations and endangering the lives and health of citizens by serving vaccine profiteering by hiding information and facts contrary to statements by corrupt authorities and bought experts.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, where most media are placed in the financial shackles of government, as various levels of government have taken full control of the media, intervention by the international community and the OHR is needed to impose a legal obligation on the media to present work and opposition. This was the case for the first few years after the end of the war, when the head of the OSCE Mission to BiH conducted elections, when the Honorable US Ambassador Robert Frowick, who was replaced by Robert Barry and who privatized the OSCE Mission while undermining basic democratic principles and allowed the authorities complete control over the media.

The real opposition has been under media blockade for almost two decades by government orders or media self-censorship, and it is necessary to prevent immoral privileges or retaliation by the government against media that dare to present opposition views – the legal obligation to publish reactions and the opposition uncensored in order to  make it possible for opposition to oppose dictatorship, crime, corruption and nepotism of the ruling structures, warned BOSS President Mirnes Ajanović.