The Authorities and the Media
THE WAR HAS ONLY BEGUN
A coordinated attack of the Yugoslav and Serbian Governments on the independent media has turned into a long-term offensive. The competent ministers are again doing their favourite thing: discovering enemies and unmasking traitors in our midst.
AIM, BELGRADE, June 13, 1998
Last Tuesday on the prime-time News of the state television, Aleksandar Vucic, the youngish Radical Minister of Information of Serbia, demonstrated the subversive activity of CNN and at the same time his skillful use of Internet. He authoritatively explained a picture of a burning house on the CNN web site as "a fire that anyone could have set" to a - Serbian house. When it came to the ethnic characteristics of the building the fact that it was not "surrounded by a wall" was proof enough for him that it did not belong to Shqipetars.
Goran Matic, federal Minister of Information, reacted the following day. Not allowing his younger and lower placed colleague to surpass him, he gave the infamous statement that "foreign diplomats have travelled 450 kilometers over Kosovo and Metohija to see for themselves that life is going on as usual in most of these parts. Children are playing, swimming in creeks, people are carrying on their farm jobs and the young people are sitting in coffee bars". At the press conference organized at the closing of the competition for the allocation of radio and TV frequencies he again pointed to this idyllic picture in which there was no place even for the killed Serbian policemen. Only two, our of some forty radio and TV stations, organized in the Association of the Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), were allocated frequencies at this competition, while the son and the daughter of the FRY President continued with their radio-television and other business activities without any problems.
Perhaps the reason lies in the Minister's assessment that in Yugoslavia "there are media which are only an extended arm of some political interests from abroad which are looking after their masters' interests", i.e. "hoping for NATO's intervention, sending a distorted picture about certain events in our country and living exclusively on foreign financial assistance...".
However, the federal Minister did not identify the "mercenary" local media. Neither his younger colleague Aleksandar Vucic nor Goran Matic thought it necessary to explain what was the state doing to defend itself from the foreign and local media enemies. They forgot to explain why the state wasn't using the same information as, for example, the CNN and "Koha Ditore". Aleksandar Vucic did not even mention the fate of the site web of the Government of Serbia which his predecessor, the lady minister, Radmila Milentijevic, had opened with much fuss through a provider from Greece.
STATE OF AFFAIRS
Independently from all the mentioned political assessments, a chance traveller in transit through Yugoslavia could easily fall for the story about a media heaven on earth - or at least in a mountainous part of the Balkans - just by counting the names of newspapers, radio and TV channels. For example, in Belgrade alone there are 14 dailies; and judging by the developments in the last two to three years they are registering a growing rather than a decreasing tendency. Same is the number of specialized papers, and the local media - irrespective of their limited circulation and influence - are somehow managing to survive.
The local media have ceased to be just a local problem when in 1997 Milosevic's regime was forced to admit to the electoral rigging and surrender the local power in some forty Serbian towns to opposition parties. In the meantime Slobodan Milosevic moved from the chair of the President of Serbia to the White Palace, a residence of the President of the federal state. Until that time, just a protocolary duty of a former model, Zoran Lilic, suddenly became very important. As far as the media were concerned, in addition to all those which were always a part of the state "information network", suddenly a large number of new ones appeared which were no longer satisfied with only publishing and playing the latest news of Radio-Television Serbia and Tanjug, i.e. with only music programmes in their own production.
After that, led by more than active Belgrade radio station "B92" appeared ANEM. After this came Kosovo as a predictable problem, and "desertion" of Montenegro as an unexpected one.
The "disciplining" started with some delay when all the mentioned problems became pressing. And, it should be added, in a style typical of Slobodan Milosevic: when it came to the media were they were, as a rule, intended for internal use only. That means that it was not important what the world thought, spoke or planned to do about Yugoslavia and the latest development in our country, but rather what its public "got" as information from the competent authorities. The local media have shaken the very foundations of Milosevic's power when they joined the world information network. The already mentioned federal Minister Goran Matic clearly and in no uncertain terms threatened that already in July this year the whole country would be watching the so called Radio-Television Yugoslavia (RTJ).
USURPING AND KEEPING
This TV programme is being broadcast on the second state television channel, and run by two Ristics: Ljubisa and Jovan, both high ranking officials of the Yugoslav Left (JUL). Although Montenegro refused to broadcast the RTJ programme because it had not been informed nor consulted about this "Yugoslav" project until the start of the programme (and not even after that), the federal Minister of Information explicitly claimed that the "RTJ owner is Federal Government, which is precisely defined. We have been endeavouring for some time to create a unified media space in FR Yugoslavia". The fact that one "out of two eyes in the head" - as Slobodan Milosevic defined relations between Montenegro and Serbia within the Federation - was not participating in that programme, was not receiving the RTJ nor had any influence on its editorial policy, and had no idea who, when and how has decided to "unite" the Yugoslav media space was of no importance.
Ambitions of "uniting" and "establishing" the Yugoslav media space did not stop at - mostly boring, strikingly indoctrinating and embarrassingly amateurish - "experimental" RTJ programme which is endeavouring to attract viewers with live coverage of sports, "patriotic" and "Yugo-nostalgic" events, but included announcements of new actions. The Federal Government - at whose helm suddenly appeared Momir Bulatovic, former President of Montenegro and two-time electoral loser (at presidential and parliamentary elections) - put its paw on Radio Yugoslavia. This is how Nikola Ivanovic, Director of Radio Yugoslavia, clearly commented on the pending "merger" of the so called RTJ and "Nasa Borba": "Only political nitwits, intellectual eunuchs assisted by career climbers and subservient journalists can do something like that." A tradition of national radio developed for sixty years was destroyed overnight: usurpers "did not understand journalism as the most subtle weaving of politics, but have promoted journalistic bullies without any moral credibility".
This is in accordance with Milosevic's style of ruling: his started his rise to the top some ten years ago with the "reshuffling" of disobedient editorial offices which his party (at that time communist) assault troopers carried out for him encouraged by the screeching of the gerontological center of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as national wailings from the Association of Writers (and pharisees) of Serbia, and essentially supported by the silence of the majority of journalists who accepted the "honour and duties" of socio-political activists in the information field. Or, as one editor of an "unimportant" (i.e. not RTS's Information-Political) desk explained: "Socialist purges organized from March 1991 pushed and pushed and finally managed to place in the forefront people who are, at least subconsciously, aware that they do not fulfill even the elementary criteria of the profession. Each of them is in a vacuum, hanging over the abyss of his own incompetence". For a "state" job that should not be an obstacle if they accept the fear as the basic proof that they are alive.
BULLIES AND DEMOCRATS
The national consensus of those times Milosevic has replaced today with the agreement of his "partners" on the political scene. The Serbian Revival Movement (SPO) is torn apart by Vuk Draskovic's aspirations to be at the same time opposition, part of the authorities, Chetnik, monarchist, democrat, eliminator of civil opposition, a leader and the best candidate for the role which - with all his power and unhidden pleasure - his best man Vojislav Seselj and Seselj's clone, Minister Aleksandar Vucic are playing now (to the first question addressed to the newly appointed Information Minister, Seselj replied "There is nothing Vucic should think about"). As a much slimier Milosevic's copy, Vuk Draskovic is hanging on for dear life onto "his" television, Belgrade Studio B, out of which he has previously driven - with the same urgency with which he greeted their return in March 1997 - the team of leading journalists of the one-time Independent Television.
The independent media in Yugoslavia - no matter how limited, hardly audible or read - truly represent a serious obstacle for the authorities which, for their own sake, promote the idea on general threat, world anti-Serbian conspiracy, stories about economic successes and successful anti-terrorist actions, decisive struggle against crime, progress in every respect and despite the whole world. And they also want some kind of acknowledgment for being democratic. Therefore the struggle against local initiatives is anything but local, insignificant. A determined action of the state to regain control over the media in FR Yugoslavia has become public, undisguised and totally exposed: optimists will draw from this fact an encouraging conclusion about the importance of the "free media". Whichever way you turn, there is not much one can do in this respect with the sceptics. The only thing left is what over a century ago the former editor of the "Rhine Papers" called a "dirty practice": persistent struggle of those whose job is to inform the public about everything that could be important for it - against stifling and "degree of freedom of information" controlled by the state (and not public) interest.
Nowadays, the control of "big" media is no longer sufficient to keep even the Yugoslav or more confined, Serbian public in a state of blissful idiocy. On the other hand, the transparency of the game the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities are playing places common sense (whatever that might mean or imply) in a dilemma as to who is thick-headed in that game: the authorities or "users of information"? Even those media that "got" frequencies were treated to the monthly lease price of 30 thousand DEM - which was subsequently halved by Momir Bulatovic. Nevertheless, this still means that a local radio or TV station should pay the state over 150 thousand DEM annually - while most of others got an information that their application was rejected because of incomplete documentation they had submitted. However, the list of required documents changed: if an applicant had a building permit, he was additionally asked to submit a contract signed with a contractor; if he had a transmitter he needed a certificate of ownership, a cadastral or some other certificate, and so on.
For days now ANEM has been informing that all its members - both legal and "illegal" - will continue broadcasting their programmes because they refuse to agree to the media darkness. On the other hand, Dragoljub Milanovic, Director of the state Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) has ordered the dismissal of all associates - last Wednesday this list contained 90 names - who sued RTS for the non-payment of their fees. Finally, the things have come to the right place: since 1992/93 1,200 dismissed editors, reporters and associates have become redundant because of their professional ("unpatriotic") disagreement with the RTS policy just because they wanted to be paid for their work ("patriotism").
Aleksandar Ciric (AIM)