New Authorities and the Media in RS

AIM Banja Luka, January 22, 2001

"At the exit of the Assembly hall reporters wait for you demanding statements form you. Be ready for that: you are now a public figure". With these words the new Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska, Mladen Ivanic, tried to prepare his ministers for their first close encounter with the media several moments after the assembly session at which they have been elected, was finished. At that moment a young man with a crew cut from the Assembly security appeared on the spot, simply stunned by the fact that a journalist (imagine the impertinence!) entered the hall to eavesdrop on the informal talk of the just elected Prime Minister!

Although the session of the National Assembly was already finished, he emphatically "asked" the reporter to leave and "not to provoke incidents". Obviously, entry of duly accredited reporters to the National Assembly hall, even after the conclusion of sessions, is considered an incident in the Republika Srpska.

After two years, with the election of Mladen Ivanic's Cabinet, the Republika Srpska again has complete highest institutions of power: President and Vice-President of the Republic, the Assembly and the Government. And what will be the relation of these new authorities towards the media and the public? This question is not interesting only for reporters and media houses. The publicity of the work is one of the basic postulates of democracy and the measure of the responsibility of the authorities towards those who have elected them - the citizens.

As far as the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska is concerned, the example from the beginning of this text offers a partial answer. An immodest sum of DM 3 million has been invested in the renovation of the former Army Center in Banja Luka, which has been turned into the assembly building. However, as far as conditions for the work of the press are concerned, that investment did not bring any improvement. Quite the contrary. In the new assembly building the reporters are strictly forbidden from entering the hall, so that they follow via telop the proceedings in the hall or some 20 sqm large Press Center.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions to the strict Assembly protocol. Reporters of state media who get special "white" accreditation cards have the privilege of being allowed entry into the hall. Thus, RTRS (Radio&Television of the Republic of Srpska) has the exclusive right of filming and broadcasting the Assembly sessions. Already in the last convocation, the deputies brought a decision that Assembly services should provide footage from the sessions to all TV stations and complete documentation (Assembly decisions and laws which are under Assembly procedure) to all accredited journalists.

However, this conclusion remained a dead letter. At the past session of the RS National Assembly, only five to six quickest journalists managed to get Mladen Ivanic' address and short biographies of new ministers. The others were told that the address was too long and that copying would take too much time and money.

It is obvious that during the renovation of the RS Assembly building no one asked "the fourth estate" for its opinion. Naturally, neither the new authorities nor the Assembly leadership should be blamed for that because this job was finished much before their election. Zoran Djeric, Vice-President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska, told AIM that already this week the Assembly leadership would meet with representatives of media houses and reporters' associations in order to redress these problems within realistic possibilities.

"It is impermissible for one television station to have the right of filming the entire sessions, while others are completely forbidden from entering the hall. All reporters must enjoy equal treatment and access to information. That is why we shall establish rules of procedure, equal for all, and already at the next session that will be sanctioned by a special assembly document", said Djeric.

Mladen Ivanic's Government will get a chance to demonstrate its relation towards the public already on January 16, when it will take over the duties from former Dodik's ministers at a joint session. Prime Minister Ivanic is known as a man who cares for the public and always, or practically always, has time for the press.

At least that was the case while he was a member of the opposition. In one of his last interviews from those opposition days, Ivanic said that if he ever became Prime Minister he would not avoid journalists and would be willing to subject himself to public scrutiny. He also said that he would try to reintroduce information ministry to the RS Government because of the incomplete legislation in this area, but also because of the situation in the state information houses.

"We shall have to open discussions with representatives of international institutions on prospects of television and printed media, as well as on possibilities for RS to keep its information houses. RS as an entity should have its own public information media", said Ivanic in his last interview as a Prime Minister designate.

However, Ivanic gave up this idea already during the election of his Cabinet. Who will now, on behalf of the RS Government, "open discussion with representatives of international institutions" and defend the need of RS to have its own entity public information houses?

The formation of a joint state radio of B&H has been already announced for April. This might be a sign of the introduction of a much wider programme range in PBS than was announced. In any case, long time ago, through a supervising agency, RTRS has been placed "under the guardianship" of the Office of High Representative, which politicians are frequently linking with its amalgamation with PBS.

The state in public media houses in RS has long ago become a problem. News-publishing and printing enterprise "The Serbian Voice", and especially RTRS are burdened by great and over the years accumulated problems of personnel, editorial, financial and organisational nature. Although it exists over 50 years and tradition is very important for newspapers, with the rapid fall of circulation "The Serbian Voice" is disastrously losing its readers. On the other hand, although it is monopolistically charging the subscription and despite this regular and rather large financial inflow, RTRS is not only unable to make a programme that would attract the viewers, but has found itself in financial troubles.

Is new RS Government going to try and throw these media a "life belt" or faced with a sea of other serious problems, simply leave them go down the drain? Until now, the programme, i.e. editorial policy of these two media literally changed with the change of the ruling set, while they remained in the service of the party in power. That is why one of the questions much speculated about these days, not only in journalistic circles, is whom will Dodik's TV and Dodik's "Voice" (Glas) go to: SDS or PDP?

The new Prime Minister was absolutely right when he said that RS legal regulations on the publicity of the work of public information institutions were incomplete.

The Republic of Srpska still doesn't have a law on free access to information which was passed last year at the level of B&H. This law would specifically lay down the obligation of authorities at all levels to provide information to all interested parties, not only the press, within the prescribed period or otherwise, face sanctions. This relates not only to the "topical" data, but also information from all agencies of public authorities. Only such a law would finally "compel" holders of public office to discontinue their hitherto practice of avoiding the public in one of the two most common ways: either by imprudently refusing to give information or, even more frequently, by indefinitely stalling which naturally, made every information useless and untopical for the media.

Today again, when they should have represented all citizens of RS in their treatment of the press, RS President Mirko Sarovic and Vice-President Dragan Cavic have remained true to the SDS principles by dividing the media into desirable and less desirable ones. This is particularly evident in their relation towards the "Independent Papers" (Nezavisne novine). For example, last March one of editors of the "Independent Papers" wrote to Mirko Sarovic while he was till Vice-President of the Republic of Srpska, asking him officially to allow General Bogdan Subotic, Chief of the RS Office for Medals, to give an interview to this daily. Sarovic did not respond to this letter to this very day and Subotic did not give that interview explaining that he needed Sarovic's permission for that. In this way the suspicion that the Office for Medals was hiding a secret on the mysterious disappearance of gold and silver for medals for Serbian heroes and meritorious citizens of the Republic of Srpska, remained only a suspicion.

Several months ago, while he was still the SDS Vice-President, Dragan Cavic said that "he doesn't give any statements for the "Independent Papers". He remained true to that promise even today when he is Vice-President of the Republic. True, the "Independent Papers" have not been "gentle" with Sarovic, Cavic and SDS during previous electoral campaigns, but that cannot be a justification for the President and Vice-President of the Republic to segregate the media. In any case, during campaign politicians say all kinds of things to each other, but are afterwards, nevertheless, forced to cooperate, more or less successfully.

Recently, in an interview to "The Serbian Voice" Dragan Cavic stated his opinion about the media "owned by RS". He said that a special body composed of experts should be in charge of running these media. According to Cavic, that media council should be organised following the example of the High Judicial, i.e. Prosecutor's Council in the judiciary. Its aim would be to prevent any influence of political parties on the work of the media.

"Today, TV News programmes which are no different from those back in

1. There is no difference in their contents: Good evening Mr.President; Today the President commissioned a generator unit in a village some thirty kilometers in the hills; The Prime Minister opened a bridge, etc. I think that these are not pieces of information we want", said Cavic. He especially pointed out that he was a champion of the liberalisation of information and introduction of competition in the media space.

Irrespective of stands of the current authorities, the time of fierce competition in the RS media space is inevitably coming. Journalists are also aware of that. Recently, bitterly joking at his own expense, one of them said that today there are more media in RS than journalists. Indeed, in Banja Luka alone, apart from RTRS there are five local TV stations, a larger number of radio stations, while one state and two private news houses issue six dailies and magazines.

It is quite clear that under conditions of market competition all these media will not be able to survive, and that means that many journalists will be left without work. On the totally unregulated labour market, without defined rules of behaviour and trade unions to protect their interests, journalists will probably get the dirty end of the stick, on account of the liberalisation of the media, same as in many other crucial situations.

Milkica Milojevic

(AIM)