N1 lawyers dispute REM ruling on election boycott video

N1

The N1 legal team believes that the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) failed to satisfactorily explains its decision to ban a video calling for a boycott of the elections which mentioned the Serbian president by name.

The CRTA NGO asked the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) for an opinion on the video titled The Only Way Not to Vote for Vucic is Not to Vote. The REM ruled that it runs counter to advertising laws since it violates the section of that law which forbids the release of advertising messages without the prior consent of the person mentioned in it.

N1 aired the video and will respect the REM decision even though its legal team feels that the law is primarily directed at commercial advertising and that the implementation of those rules is not always automatically possible. N1’s experts on media law believe that the invoking of the clauses which protect personal assets in advertising are not intended to protect politicians from criticism but to prevent from commercial exploitation of people without their prior consent.

The experts said that the privacy of officials is limited compared to the privacy of others because of the importance of the post they hold which is stated in the law on public information and the media. The standard that officials have a limited right to privacy in situations when the public interest has a priority has been confirmed in many rulings by the European Court of Human Rights.

N1 Lawyers believe that the REM did not put forward any argument about how the video called for discrimination but just cited regulations. Even though the formal and simple interpretation of regulations could have led REM to the decision it took it had to have taken a step further to get to the specific article, assessment of whether it is appropriate to apply it to political advertising and determine whether the public interest outweighs the interest of the person it is protecting. Only that kind of analysis could have led to a correct and legitimate decision. One especially problematic aspect is the cursory claim of discrimination since this kind of decision should have a more complex explanation than the simple quoting of the law, the N1 legal team said.