State Television between Djindjic and Kostunica

Who Will Control the Ruins of TV Bastille

Late in the afternoon on October 5, after two hours of interruption of the programme on all three “state” TV channels, the inscription “New Radio-Television Serbia” appeared on the screens. To this day, that remained the only thing that is new about it

AIM Belgrade, July 29, 2001

It is true that even publication of news provided by agencies without any selection according to political correctness was a Copernican revolution in relation to the manner in which Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) carried out its mission of informing the public in the past decade. In big protests of the opposition in March 1991, RTS earned the inglorious nickname “TV Bastille” which was defended by the regime by tanks more resolutely than any other institution of power. This led to its proclamation “a legitimate military target” of NATO bombing in 1999 and finally to setting of its building on fire on October 5 last year.

The new authorities manifested a more than symptomatic indifference to the developments in the national TV station. From the outside it seemed that settling affairs in it would be left to “internal forces” which, judging by the faces that appeared on the screen, were headed by former editor of TV Belgrade information programme Nenad Ristic, former sport journalist and pensioner Petar Lazovic, journalist specialised in economy Milorad Petrovic and Aleksandar Crkvenjakov who had left TV Belgrade in the beginning of the nineties and who was remembered as the editor of an entertaining show. Their different experiences influenced the character of the prime time news shows: Ristic and Petrovic have not managed to manifest anything more than the notorious obsoleteness of the “old school” of TV journalism from pre-Milosevic's era, Lazovic added his equally outdated “charm” and enthusiasm about the winners, while Crkvenjakov, thanks to the years spent outside media, was the only one that made the impression of a new face and certain, not too pronounced professionalism.

If one disregards the newsreaders that overnight became editors and journalists, nothing significant has changed on national TV. Fifteen odd prominent protagonists of Milosevic's propaganda disappeared from the screens, a few were sacked, but majority of those who claimed that “they had just done their job” not only remained, but even wish to continue to work. The new acting management has not succeeded in getting rid of the latter even by a drastic reduction of the already miserable salaries. It did not make matters easier that the authorities took forever with nomination of the management board of RTS, but the obvious sluggishness just underlined certain other things. On the one hand, electronic media that equally successfully as RTS helped maintain Milosevic's regime in power, have experienced just slight changes, while RTV Kosava owned by Marija Milosevic and “YUList” RTV Pink in a very dubious way changed the owner and the ownership structure, respectively. On the other hand, the demand of Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) that ownership transformation of at least electronic media be suspended until the law on information and telecommunications is passed has not produced any effect except verbal support of ministries in charge. The public and journalists were busy guessing who in DOS was “taking over” control of the media, who certain newspapers belonged to, who, how and how much was paid for undisturbed broadcasting of essentially unchanged programmes – except that those who had until recently been enemies and traitors became favourites.

For months, leader of Reform Party of Voivodina and a journalist, Miodrag Isakov, was believed to be a candidate for director general of RTS and even made statements in this sense. Among other candidates the most frequently mentioned names were those of Gordana Susa, former journalist in news programme of RTS and presently at the post of the president of NUNS, and Ofelija Backovic, director of RTV Pancevo, the station that in the last months of Milosevic's rule was the only one that broadcast news (partly covering Belgrade) that the regime did not control, but strongly jammed. The finally established Management Board of RTS headed by theatre director Dejan Mijac, decided to appoint Aleksandar Crkvenjakov to the post of director general.

Judging that he was lucky for having left the news programme in the end of the eighties, and two years later RTS altogether, Crkvenjakov says: “I left of my own free will – all they could do was take away my pass”. Ten years later, this time from the post of director general – from which his predecessor Dragoljub Milanovic had gone directly to jail for threatening people's lives during NATO bombing and financial mismanagement and after that, Crkvenjakov explains that he returned to RTS in the evening of October 5 because it had “always been the house I belong to from which I was chased out by the 'uncouth'”. When he came he found “too many sins, too many expectations, too little money, too few experts, too scarce equipment”, problems that will be very difficult to solve. “I know it sounds bad, but the only way we can preserve and put national RTV on its feet is re-introduction of a subscription fee”, he says. “There is no such thing as a commercial public broadcasting company, in the world they all live off public revenue”. He pleads for public support in this undertaking; concerning the risk of failure, he declared: “I have already gone once and it won't be difficult for me to do it again. I will go away when I conclude that the force of entropy is greater than our energy to reverse it; or when I conclude that I, as a man with no party to back me, have no force to resist conflicts among parties which the fragile honour of the system will have to pay for”.

The first signals that somebody will have to pay because of the conflicts of political interests within the ruling coalition arrived from the Politika. About ten days ago, Darko Ribnikar, acting director general, discharged acting editor-in-chief of the Politika because of the visit of Vojislav Kostunica, President of FRY, to the editorial board which the director general had not been informed about. Along with the punishment of degradation to the job of an associate journalist, a guest appearance on TV Politika of the Republican Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was hastily organised.

This type of neurotic behavior of leaders is known ever since the days of the foundation of opposition parties which spent a great deal of their activities on counting the minutes and length of texts devoted to them by media and accusing editorial boards of having “sold” themselves to this or that leader. In the beginning of the nineties, for instance, Vuk Draskovic considered Vreme weekly “Djindjic's”, while Djindjic was equally convinced that it was “Draskovic's”. An independent opinion or even worse the public stand of that same weekly that, despite all the risks, it would support the candidacy of Milan Panic for president of Serbia, or last year, the candidacy of Vojislav Kostunica for president of FRY – has never been received benevolently, and still is not.

The incident in the Politika was not the only one. Last week Milorad Petrovic, one of the candidates for the post of the editor-in-chief of the information programme of RTS, declared that he was withdrawing his candidacy, resigning to the post of the editor of the central news show and leaving RTS. According to the statement carried by Beta agency, Petrovic decided to take this step “because of great political pressure of certain ruling parties which would turn national television into a political instrument”. He refused to say which political parties he meant, but that did not prevent rumours.

Gordana Susa, president of NUNS also applied for the post of the editor of information programme of RTS. According to the information from the RTS, the Management Board either was not happy with the candidates who had applied (the “expected” ones did not even apply), or some potential candidates set unacceptable conditions in order to apply.

Of course, there were interpretations that it was one in a series of conflicts between Djindjic and Kostunica as the leaders of two most powerful parties in the ruling coalition. Outside the sphere of the media this conflict has led to the split of DOS group of deputies in the Assembly of Serbia into four factions, to the demand for a profound reconstruction of the Government of Serbia, but also to the first public mutual accusations of coalition partners for incompetence, inconsistency and – corruption. That is the context in which the struggle for the control of national RTS, or rather of what is left of it, is taking place – on top of the ruins of TV Bastille.

Aleksandar Ciric

(AIM)