AN INFORMATION RESERVATION

The Media Scene in Vojvodina

AIM, Belgrade, October 4, 1996

To this very day the Provincial authorities keep the citizens of Vojvodina under an extremely strict information regime.

The last Friday in September a new political weekly "Nedeljni Dnevnik" (Weekly News) hit the stands on the Vojvodina press market. This paper is a publication of the Novi Sad publishing house "Dnevnik" (News), a regional (Vojvodina's) information Mastodont left over from the communist times. The house "Dnevnik" was conceived as a center of information in Vojvodina (together with the Radio and Television - RTV Novi Sad) in the Serbian language. At the times of "autonomist" authorities, the "Dnevnik", "Forum" and the RTV Novi Sad had the same function as other major state papers, radio and television stations in the FRY republican centers.

After "yoghourt revolution" in October 1988 and the reduction of the autonomy of Vojvodina to a mere form, the general centralization of Serbia ensued not bypassing the media. Consequently, the Novi Sad media became but a branch offices of the Belgrade headquarters in which all major decisions were made. As often as not editors were dispatched directly from Belgrade to put the insufficiently obedient editorial offices in order. During the war the Novi Sad state media led the way in spreading intolerance, national prejudices and war propaganda. Trying to "out-Herod Herod" editors of the Novi Sad media published articles which were too radical even for not so queasy heads of the Belgrade state houses.

To this very day the provincial authorities and cadres from Vojvodina, holding the republican and federal functions, keep the citizens of Vojvodina under an extremely strict information regime: if in whole Serbia it is undesirable and practically unfeasible to establish electronic media with informational and political contents, in Vojvodina it is hard to start even an apolitical television station. Thus, in Novi Sad there is not a single private TV and only four radio stations operating outside the RTS system, while in Nis, which is of the same size, there are some ten TV stations and almost twice as much radio programmes. Consequently, the people of Vojvodina mostly depend on information coming from Belgrade, naturally those controlled by the regime.

In the years between the "yoghourt revolution" and the beginning of the war the Vojvodina media were meticulously cleansed of journalists who opposed the inciting of the nationalistic hysteria or, simply refused to break the basic professional and ethical norms. Therefore the journalistic world was forced to independently self-organize the profession. That is how the Independent Society of Journalists of Vojvodina came into being, the first massive professional organization of the kind in Serbia. This association soon launched a bi-weekly (later to become a weekly) "Independent - Vojvodina's Civil paper" with the most renowned pens who used to work for the "Dnevnik" and RTS NS, as associates. The paper managed to survive and comes out regularly, but is faced with extreme material difficulties and impossibility to advertise its contents in other media in Vojvodina.

The local authorities realized that direct attacks on papers and journalists and classical repression only provide free of charge advertising for those they aim to destroy; that is why the strategy of disregarding and silently preventing the paper from getting out of the "reservation" is applied. It goes without saying that the authorities are in no way responsible for anybody's marketing or distribution, but they are responsible for providing equal market conditions for all.

In Novi Sad there is also a bi-weekly "Svet" (World), a commercial paper which mostly deals in politics and entertainment business (and politics in show business), which rather successfully applies the formula with which "Globus" and "Nacional" in Croatia have realized spectacular circulation. "Svet" is created by a team of young journalists who had developed in the students' paper "Index". That university paper was usurped in 1991 by a group of radical nationalists under the auspices of the regime, so that the future journalists of "Svet" turned to making a paper for a wide market. After that "Index" made several shameful issues which were a kind of anthology of fascism for beginners, after which it was extinguished or frozen until some better times. The only Vojvodina paper in the Serbian language, the "Dnevnik" is having hard times: many of its best journalists were either driven away or left the editorial office of their own volition, circulation is far from realistic for a paper with no local competition, and the paper's reputation - although its management claims the opposite - has been lost long ago. Today the "Dnevnik" is an impersonal, badly edited advertising poster of the ruling party in comparison with which even for-the-authorities always "reliable" "Politika" seems like an independent and pluralistic organ.

Now, the house "Dnevnik" has launched an extremely ambitious, demanding and expensive project of preparing a political weekly with a news-magazine profile. On a rather small Serbian market there are already the renown weeklies "Vreme "(Time) and NIN (Weekly Information Paper) and a high-circulation "Nedeljni Telegraf" (Weekly Telegraph), as well as "Nezavisni" (Independent), as a direct regional competition. Naturally, that doesn't mean that there is no place under the sun for another weekly. Judging by first issues, the problem lies in the fact that "Nedeljni Dnevnik" was made according to its own recipe, same as the parent, daily issue of this house. That means that it is chronically anaemic, boring and stiff, open only to the opinions of the authorities and journalists close to them, and totally lacking any contents which represent an achievement of investigative or analytical journalism. And without this, there is no weekly that can earn a good reputation or circulation, or - what is hardest - both.

Four years ago the house "Dnevnik" stopped the bi-weekly "Stav" (Attitude), which distinguished itself for its highly professional quality and uncompromising political independence. This project - which was practically given away to the house by the dissolved Alliance of the Socialist Youth of Vojvodina - was obviously a "negative model" for the creators of the new weekly: it was as if they tried to avoid anything that resembled that which makes a paper interesting and worth reading.

The war, in which Vojvodina was geographically on the "first line of attack", and politically a very sensitive area, has ended rather ingloriously for its instigators. The sound of the war trumpets in the media died away and the far-famed journalistic patriots of general orientation changed their rhetoric or even jobs, as instructed. The Vojvodina state media are in poor condition, while the infrastructure of independent media, particularly the electronic ones, is still in the making. In the name of the "unity of the state" the RTV Novi Sad, the house which had an outstanding informational, entertainment, documentary and cultural production in the seventies and eighties, was reduced to a mere correspondent's office of the RTS headquarters. In shaping the future media scene in Vojvodina, one that will be worthy of economically and culturally most developed region of Serbia, it will be necessary to star from scratch. Everything that could be destroyed and demolished, has already been done away with in previous years. Now it only remains to "demolish" the demolition men. The November elections will tell whether the conditions are ripe for this.

(AIM) Teofil Pancic