VICTORIES AND DEFEATS WITH A TASTE OF ROUTINE

Pre-Election TV Box

21st century structures crop up every day on the screens of Radio and Television Serbia, albeit only as foundation-stones. While the promised economic revival from the 1990 electoral campaign focused on fast railway tracks in Serbia, in the construction of which the whole world was interested, six years later the only thing left to symbolize future prosperity is the additional construction of a small railway station "Prokop", or sometimes even the beginning of construction of an intersection which will reduce the traffic on a motorway. However, usability of these pictures has remained the same.

AIM, Belgrade, September 10, 1996

News on the official (and final) establishment of the opposition coalition "Together" (Zajedno) which the SPO, the DS and the GSS have been shaping for months as the major opponent of Milosevic's Socialists at the forthcoming federal and local elections in Serbia and Montenegro, did not cause much sensation. However, as expected, the state media ignored it. The alternative and quasi-alternative ones, by no means unexpectedly, paid more attention to the agreement between Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the Kosovo Albanians, then to the one between Vuk Draskovic, Zoran Djindjic and Vesna Pesic, which was, burdened by disagreements in the leading ranks, in the making since the beginning of this year.

The first working day in September, on which these two agreements were signed, showed that after six years of political pluralism, the election patterns in Serbia have become established to a point of becoming a drab routine: the ruling SPS is hardly so successful in anything else as in conducting the electoral campaign; major opposition parties are hardly so unsuccessful in anything else as they are in joining forces so as to parry the sacrosanct Socialists' rule. As for the constituents, they are tired of making "historic" decisions in frequent electoral contests (1990, 1992, 1993) so that the voting political fever, which was characteristic of the first two exceptionally heated campaigns, is apparently being replaced by apathy towards developments on the political scene and a growing number of voters has decided to skip the ongoing electoral race.

The start of the autumn campaign, marked by but a minor incident at the signing of rules of media behaviour in introducing the participants in the elections, demonstrated the balance of power between major political opponents at the coming elections, as well as the role of the media in them. The opposition was unable to oppose the practice according to which the state house RTS, whose first man is also a member of the Main Board of the ruling party, is the one to lay down the undisputable rules on impartial media behaviour during elections. It was equally unable to secure the redefinition of the equitable treatment of parties in media reporting independently from the criteria on the precise length of information programme slots. However, its impotence was only a consequence of its defeat in a far more important political struggle which is, from the first days of pluralism, waged for the democratization of the media sphere.

Years of pressures exerted by the opposition and journalistic professionals - mass demonstrations, like those of March 9, 1991, which ended with the loss of human lives, initiatives for changes to the Law on Information and the Law on Radio Broadcasting, boycott of the work of the Parliament, threats of elections boycott, organization of trade unions of journalists, strikes of journalists, establishment of a new association of journalists - did not manage to weaken the influence of the ruling elite on the central media.

On the eve of the latest elections the political parties were given a freedom to accept or reject the rules defined by the RTS, as a major "contractor" in the presentation of electoral participants.

Production of Positive Publicity

The valid model of Serbian official journalism had been consolidated even before the last republican elections in 1993 with the transformation of the SPS war policy into a peace-making one and the replacement of the support of a patriotic war in the neighbouring Bosnia with the rhetoric on peace, prospects for the lifting of the sanctions and a better future. Overheated nationalistic euphoria started to disappear from the media focus so that Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Radicals, whom that same "big television" had promoted into a legitimate protagonist on the political stage, was totally "banished" from the screens of state television. Instead, his privileged place in the filmed political reality was won by the party of President Milosevic's wife, first called the United Left and then the JUL. In the meantime, the treatment of the opposition also took a more definite shape, which in the RTS version of reality, appeared increasingly unnecessary, superfluous.

The reality which we watch daily on the RTS screens practically consists of only one picture: successful political and economic reintegration of Serbia and Montenegro in the international community. This subject is the most important single subject of the RTS prime time information programme. The RTS journalists are well trained to use the slightest opportunity to translate any mention of Yugoslavia into an expression of international recognition of the "peace-making policy the FRY pursued from the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis", its "crucial contribution to the stabilization of peace in this region" and the need for "the soonest possible creation of conditions for the full integration of FR Yugoslavia in international" political, economic and financial institutions. In the first week of June, for example, the RTS carried three reports a day on average, on successful economic cooperation. But it also persistently refused to inform its viewers on workers' dissatisfaction with the current economic policy: in the last three months there was not a single piece of news on state TV on strikes which shook Serbia.

21st century structures crop up daily on the screens of Radio and Television Serbia, albeit only as foundation-stones. While the promised economic revival from the 1990 electoral campaign focused on fast railway tracks in Serbia, in the construction of which the whole world was interested, six years later the only thing left to symbolize the future prosperity is the expansion of a small railway station "Prokop", or sometimes even the beginning of a construction of an intersection which would reduce the traffic on a motorway. However, the usability of these pictures has remained the same.

In this, it seems, the state television is guided by the idea that it will all happen sooner if the proponents of the opposition policy are less in the public eye. During first week of June the RTS broadcast 20 reports on party activities: 17 were dedicated to the SPS and one to the "New Democracy", one to the quasi-opposition Radical Party "Nikola Pasic" and the JUL for the Republic of Srpska, which is not even registered in Serbia. According to the editorial assessment of the central state TV, for example, in the last week of February the viewers were informed on the activities of only three parties: the SPS, the JUL and the newly established Democratic Center. In addition, out of 17 information contributions 14 were dedicated to the SPS and two to the JUL. In only one week of March there were nine reports on the SPS, while the Socialist's coalition partner "New Democracy" (five times) and the party of Milosevic's family partner - the JUL (four times) also deserved media attention on the official television screens.

Discrediting the Opposition

Among other party activities mention was only made of the rally of the then announced coalition "Together" in Nis in a way which students of journalism should be taught about as impermissible in reporting on political events. Out of 12 sentences of the reporter's commentary on the rally, two referred to what the opposition leaders said there. Instead of giving its microphone to Draskovic, Djindjic or Pesic, the RTS rather gave it to their political opponent Mile Ilic, President of the Communal Board of the SPS of Nis, so that he could qualify the rally as a failure and call the legitimate leaders of parliamentary parties "uninvited guests".

At that time the state television also organized a commentary of Vuk Draskovic's letter addressed to the members of the Contact Group in which he had asked them "to exert pressure" on Milosevic from without, promising that the SPO would do the same from within. In seven days five contributions were broadcast with opinions of ministers of trade and civil engineering, the JUL spokesman, the director of the "Politika" to end with the words of the RTS commentator calling Draskovic a "traitor" and "an informer who defames his own country and people before the world potentates" and resorts to "methods of action seen in Goebbels' propaganda". In his final blow, in a persecution in which Draskovic did not get a single chance to answer the accusations, the RTS commentator tried to discredit the leader of the largest opposition party calling him "a pretendant to power".

Precisely such negative qualification of the opposition as a claimant to power shows that, according to the RTS professional journalistic ideology, the opposition has not yet become a legitimate protagonist in the political life. According to a 1991 study of the information programme out of 126 assessments of the opposition, 120 were negative and only six positive. In that same period, out of 87 qualifications of the authorities which were shown, 77 were positive and ten negative.

During summer the opposition managed to get to the screens only with stories on internal frictions among its ranks regarding the formation of the new coalition. The media rules according to which the parliamentary opposition parties have been made equal with several dozens other, practically non-existent parties, deprived the opposition of that only chance to present itself to the electorate as a serious competitor of the current ruling set, which already now shows who might win the elections.

As a comfort to the looser - there are no such new special rules of the media behaviour during elections that will be able to rectify the imbalance. That can be only corrected by professional rules on everyday behaviour of journalists - both before as well as after the elections - which will not force them to tailor the reality according to the world map produced at the official level. And that implies still unpredictably long struggle for the professionalisation of journalism.

(AIM) Jovanka Matic