Home Β» Montenegro. T he consortium calls on the authorities to ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable without delay, following the Criminal Code, which prescribes higher penalties for attacks on journalists. That case ended without an adequate conclusion, meaning no criminal or misdemeanor responsibility was established for the perpetrator. In fact, since January , the MFRR has observed a particularly hostile environment for women journalists in Montenegro.
Of the five attacks documented by the MFRR platform since January, all journalists targeted were women. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia and a transition period, in Montenegro β now a candidate country for EU membership β the evolution of the media landscape continued in parallel with the attempts to accelerate democratic developments.
According to the latest ranking by Reporters Without Borders on press freedom in the world, Montenegro occupies the 40th place out of a total of countries taken into consideration , therefore it is positioned quite high compared to the other countries of the post-Yugoslav area.
However, the situation is not rosy. External interference, mainly from Serbia, through media ownership structures, and the pervasiveness of propaganda are just some of the problems plaguing the media sector in Montenegro. While on the one hand the European Commission, in its latest report on Montenegro, considers the level of pluralism of the Montenegrin media landscape to be satisfactory, the Media Ownership Monitor operated by the Global Media Registry highlights some critical issues.
Specifically, a high degree of cross-media ownership concentration and a significant risk of political interference in editorial decisions. The first problem arises from the fact that eight main media companies control The second problematic aspect is linked to a strong polarization of the media, with a clear tendency to align with certain political positions. Also worth highlighting is the issue of safety of journalists which, in Montenegro, is linked first and foremost to the inability or lack of will of the competent authorities to conduct adequate investigations and resolve cases of attacks on journalists.
