The hate speech on the news portals is everything but harmless and needs to be urgently solved, in order to positively affect political and economic circumstances of the citizens' lives, Bosnia and Herzegovina's Press Council said presenting its campaign aimed at the hate speech prevention.

The goal of the project, the Press Council said, is to monitor and prevent the hate speech spread in the comments of readers on the news portals

“This is one of the burning issues that the online media in Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing”, the Press Council said.

The project ‘STOP! Hate Speech’ will be carried out from August through December in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWRP) and the Media Content Management (MCM) and with the support of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the USAID.

“Drastic contents containing the hate speech will be immediately removed, and those posting such comments banned or, in some cases, reported to the police,” the Press Council said.

“The hate speech on the news portals is everything but a harmless thing, and it needs to be urgently solved in order to positively change the political and economic circumstances for better lives of citizens in this unstable and vulnerable country.”

The Press Council had previously successfully implemented ‘STOP! Hate speech’ during the 2014 election campaign and a short post-election period. A team of the monitors followed the contents of the readers’ comments on 42 news portals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, posting a ‘STOP! Hate speech’ sticker in order to remind and inform the visitors that the hate speech does not mean the freedom of expression but its abuse.