SCISSORS AND SLIDING RULE

Media in Serbia

According to inequality in media, the forthcoming elections do not differ from the preceding four. The only thing that is new concerning the media is the possibility that along with the scissors used for years by the regime to discipline the media from above, this time a slide rule held by the opposition will also be applied, but from below

AIM Belgrade, 24 June, 1997

Within just ten days, both associations of journalists which exist at the moment in Serbia held their annual conventions. Representatives of the "official" Association of Journalists of Serbia, dear to the state and especially to the ruling party, met on Zlatibor and talked for two whole days. The federal and the republican ministers of information were present at their convention, and Radio-Television Serbia, a few days later, devoted to it one of its central programs in order to have the public informed about the conclusions of the gathering of journalists on Zlatibor and probably especially about the appeal of minister Radmila Milentijevic, who told them to "be the conscience of the society" they were living in.

Among those who were present, there were a lot of those who have been in the past years nothing but "good Serbs" and who seem to want to be a little bit of journalists again (especially the "conscience of the society"), although some of those who were on Zlatibor continued to insist that they were the ones who had preserved "the patriotic course" of Serb journalism. Whether by mere chance or not, but the report of RTS failed to mention the stance of the new federal minister of information Goran Matic that in the future the federal government would abolish the division into independent and state media.

The convention of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) was held in Belgrade, at the Youth Centre building, with no minister present. Minister Radmila Milentijevic excused herself under the pretext that she was busy. Of course, there were no cameras of the RTS either, because for it, the "independent" have always been nothing but "enemies of the state". This was evident from the final resolution adopted by the "independent" which says that "those same ones who with their editorial policy in most influential media were war mongering, spreading religious and ethnic hatred and ideological intolerance, are now appearing as the authors of the new draft law on information". The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia did not "deserve" to be mentioned in the programs of the RTS, not only on the day when the convention took place, but not even the next day when the premises of the Association in Knez Mihalova street were broken into, the documentation scattered and a part of the equipment destroyed.

The difficult economic situation of journalists was discussed at both conventions. On Zlatibor, among other, it was possible to hear that the position of journalists was more difficult than ever before, "both economically and morally". At the journalists' convention in Belgrade it was stated that one third (out of 785) of the members of NUNS were unemployed, and another third were in an exceptionally difficult economic situation.

The Convention of the Association of Journalists of Serbia will also be remembered for the declaration of its president, Milorad Komrakov, who established that "there has never been so many bad journalists in Serbia like recently", that "the political overtone destroyed the profession in many editorial staffs". Just some time before Komrakov uttered this allegation, a quite broad state operation had begun in Serbian media which could be called "rat poisoning" and which seems to be aimed at reduction of the number of "bad" journalists and "bad" media. The brunt of the law will, of course, be born primarily by media which are not controlled by the state. In the beginning of this operation, it was declared that the state wished to introduce incomparably more order into quite chaotic sphere of electronic media. The figure which is usually quoted is about 300 pirate radio-stations and about 100 unregistered tv stations on the territory of Serbia. Introduction of order into the broadcasting network and keeping piracy at bay would not have been controversial if the operation had not had from the very beginning a quite clear political overtone.

The state has for years passed over in silence the fact that some radio and tv stations are working without permits, and remembered this only at the moment when the opposition has taken over control in many cities in Serbia. As long as these unregistered radio and tv stations did not broadcast news, or with the blessing of the previous authorities represented and advocated the policy of the Socialists, the fact that they worked without permits was not noticed and did not disturb anyone. In Nis, for example, where last year a few local television stations simply avoided to see several ten thousand workers of the electronic and metal industries passing for days under their windows demanding their salaries and bread, everything was perfectly alright, and nobody asked them for permits. Especially not at the time when some local radio and tv stations interrupted their purely commercial and musical programs ("without a trace of politics") in order to cover the Congress of the Socialist Party of Serbia.

A year later, or more precisely in the past few days, the "attentive" state administration hurried to that same (now oppositionist) Nis with essentially changed media situation, so that in just a few days, first the experts from the federal ministry of transportation and communications and then the republican financial policemen visited the local television station, and demanded to see the entire documentation on purchasing of television equipment. The former demanded also that the Nis TV immediately interrupt work (the deadline for interruption of broadcasting expired last weekend), while financial policemen have "dropped in" four times already. Financial policemen demand that full documentation be presented to them about purchase of equipment which was bought while the Socialists were in power. The Socialists have not left very tidy documentation about it, and now this could be one of the main reasons for shutting down the city TV in oppositionist Nis.

Pressure exerted on local media is also increasing where the Socialists are still in power. In Leskovac, for example, after a somewhat more tolerant team of Socialists was replaced by a significantly more rigid group, directors and editors of local media received a warning "not to forget whose media they were". All news about activities of opposition parties in this city have been almost completely banned or reduced to a minimum. A guest performance of the president of the Serb Revival Movement (SPO) Vuk Draskovic in a paid for political program called "Open Studio" of Television Leskovac was unexpectedly cancelled. The ban was pronounced after the opportunity to be guests in this program was used by Radicals Vojislav Seselj and Tomislav Nikolic, as well as the spokesman of the Socialist Party of Serbia, Ivica Dacic. For six months already Radio Station BUM 93 from Pozarevac has not been working, shut down by local authorities at the time of the winter protests.

According to many assessments, probably the strongest attack against independent media are the developments happening in the past few days around the editorial staff of Nasa Borba. An inspection team of the republican revenue administration carried out a blitz control of the financial operation of the enterprise Fininvest from Novi Sad which is also the publisher of Nasa Borba. The publisher is requested to pay 437 thousand dinars (about 132 thousand German marks) for taxes, although the enterprise has already paid 341 thousand dinars of turnover taxes and another 379 thousand dinars of income tax. Journalists of Nasa Borba claim that this tax was invented and call it "state racket". In a recently published editorial of Nasa Borba, among other, the following has been written: "If we agree to pay the invented unpaid tax today, tomorrow they will levy a tax on us because we do not all have dark complexion, or because we do not all wear the same number of shoes". It is probably a pure accident that financial police happened to visit Nasa Borba just a few days after this editorial staff was awarded the prestigious award of the International Association of Publishers, the "Golden Pen".

At both recently held journalists' conventions, pressures were discussed to which media are exposed to in cities where coalition Together is in power. Journalists who were at the convention on Zlatibor complained of unprecedented "pressure" and "terror" some of the members of this association are faced with, deprived in their former media of the possibility, for instance, to nominate Milosevic for a Nobel price or to send him a telegram of support, since their "journalism" could have been mostly brought down to such "activities". At the annual convention of NUNS, sharp remonstration could be heard because of ambitions of certain party leaders to impose the logic in media like the notorious "we are all slightly socialists" in the environments where they have won power. This primarily referred to growing complaints of the SPO concerning the work of Studio B, Radio B-92 and many other independent media. In case of Studio B things have gone much further than grumbling and reached the level of serious warnings that soon personnel changes could follow. It seems that in SPO they believe that within the coalition Together they had drawn the shortest straw and that this was obvious in media which should have formally been under their control. Those who demanded practically until yesterday from the media to be the flag, nowadays do not seem to be opposed to the idea of turning them into rags as long as they wiped in their favour. The message implied would approximately read as follows: if we are sitting in the authorities which participate in financing your program, you too have to like our ideas about Draza or the monarchy; that means that our statements cannot be shortened, and we are not interested to what extent this measuring of each published or skipped sentence has anything to do with journalism.

For the time being, in Studio B they still answer with the thesis that they are not RTS. "If they want Studio B to be a paraphrase of RTS, there should not be journalists working here, just as there are no journalists in RTS, but propagandists or spokesmen", the editor-in-chief of Studio B, Lila Radonjic, declared recently, advocating in favour of the thesis that Studio B should not share the destiny of the coalition Together.

A few months before the elections, the situation in the media in Serbia is acquiring new dark shadows and threatening, like so many times before, to question their regularity. According to inequality in the media, the forthcoming elections will not at all differ from the previous four. The only thing that is new concerning the media is the possibility that apart from the scissors the regime has applied for years in disciplining the media from above, this time a slide rule held by the opposition will be applied, but from below.

Nenad Lj. Stefanovic (AIM)