MEDIA OF NATIONAL MINORITIES IN VOJVODINA

Abstract

Public information in the languages of national minorities is an important element of the media sector of each country, and especially of multiethnic, multi-confessional and multilingual countries that genuinely care for the ratified Council of Europe documents, such as the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities and the Charter on Regional and Minority Languages, to be an active part of everyday life of a democratically established community. About a million members of various national minorities live in Serbia. Minority communities are mainly concentrated in the northern part of Serbia Vojvodina (Hungarian, Slovakian, Romanian, Rusyn, etc.). There is a long tradition of informing in minority languages. Only in Vojvodina there are about 114 media that at least partially produced content in 11 minority languages. The rights of national minorities in the field of information are guaranteed by the Constitution, media laws, ratified international documents. However, informing minorities is still taking place today without a consistent media policy. It remains on legal confusion relating to the regulation of state property in the media in the languages of minorities, which is the result of political agreements within the ruling political elite.