Although journalists should be required to adhere to high standards of professionalism and responsibility, they should at the same time be seen as part of a protected group of professionals, given the vital nature of their work, the US Embassy in Podgorica has told Pobjeda. Namely, this is the embassy’s response to Pobjeda’s question of whether a precedent in which a political party, for the first time in Montenegro, stood behind a criminal complaint against a member of the media community, in this case Ms Tamara Nikčević, could jeopardize the position of journalists and whether that means indirectly insisting on the introduction of “verbal tort”.
“With that in mind, legal proceedings initiated against journalists can have a very real frightening effect on the ability of journalists to perform their duties, so such actions should be approached with extreme caution”, the US Embassy says.
