Illustration by Latuff.
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Serbia's Media War
Every week, ANEM, Serbia's Association of Independent Media, sends out its report on media repression in Yugoslavia. Break-ins at newspaper offices, TV stations sabotaged, arrests of journalists, and public officials denouncing independent media are daily occurrences. The Freedom Forum has referred to Serbia's media laws as "the most draconian in central Europe."
The media were a battleground in the Kosovo war, with NATO targeting Serbian state television stations and Serbian TV showing the movie "Wag The Dog" in back-to-back reruns as an indictment of the U.S. government. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's armed forces took over the 10-year-old independent radio station B92, leading to an international coalition to save the station, which has since re-emerged as B2-92. Meanwhile, media critics around the world condemned western news outlets like CNN for pro-NATO bias bordering on propaganda.
Though the bombs have stopped raining on Belgrade, the media war continues. MediaChannel affiliates have been monitoring the situation closely; we bring you the best of their reports.
-Aliza Dichter, "Serbia's Media War" editor
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Hell No, We Won't Cover
In response to Vojislav Seselj's threats against Serbian journalists, independent media in Serbia have issued a boycott against Seselj and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) which he heads. But while 14 media outlets have agreed not to publish any further statements by the ultra-nationalist or offer any coverage of his party, the boycott does not include remarks made by Seselj in his official capacity as Deputy Prime Minister. As Belgrade journalist Vlado Mares notes, "just how effective this boycott will be remains to be seen." Is self-censorship really an adequate response to government censorship? From Institute for War and Peace Reporting, February 18 2000
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"Traitors... Criminals... Murderers... Journalists"
On February 10, 2000, Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister, Vojislav Seselj, denounced independent Serbian journalists as accomplices in the Feb. 7 murder of Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic. In ominous comments later endorsed by Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic, Seselj called independent journalists "traitors" and "criminals," warning a B2-92 reporter that "the gloves are off."
From Human Rights Watch, February 11 2000
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Death Threats And Free Press
In a region where newspapers are seized, media outlets shuttered and
journalists murdered, Veran Matic, Chairman of the Association of
Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) in Yugoslavia and founder of
Belgrade's internationally renowned Radio B92, is Serbia's foremost media freedom fighter. MediaChannel interviewed Matic about the recent
violent threats against independent journalists. Matic warns: "Now it is
literally impossible to predict whether those threatened will remain
alive by the time this interview appears in public."
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Overview: A Decade Of Media Repression
Beginning in the late 1980s, and formalized with the enacting of the restrictive Serbian Law on Public Information in 1998, independent media in Serbia have been suppressed, persecuted, harassed and attacked by the Yugoslav government. Using tactics ranging from the bureaucratic — state takeover of media outlets, state-controlled broadcast-licensing competitions — to the brutal — the still-unsolved murder of independent newspaper editor Slavko Curuvija — the ruling regime has created an environment so hostile to a free press that human-rights groups around the world are sounding the alarm. From Media Center,
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The Truth Is Out There
The American TV show "X Files" explores shadowy conspiracies and fictional government disinformation campaigns. The show itself may be part of a different kind of info-control in Serbia. According to the "World Press Review," the majority of television and radio programming in Serbia is dominated by U.S. and South American entertainment shows, music videos, and world sports events, with almost no time given over to news reports. But, as independent Serbian journalist Katarina Subasic suggests, if this is part of the regime's plan to win support by suppressing news coverage, it may be backfiring: Satellite dishes are "bringing alternative perspectives into Serbs' living rooms and ensuring that they are no longer buying the regime's propaganda." From World Press Review,
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What Makes A Journalist?
When the Committee to Protect Journalists issued its list of journalists killed in 1999, it did not include the 16 victims of NATO's bombing of Radio-Television Serbia in April 1999. According to commentator Edward S. Herman, CPJ excluded these journalists because RTS was a state-run station, broadcasting propaganda, not journalism. But who is the judge of news? Herman singles out several prominent Western reporters whose reporting on the Kosovo bombings seemed to demonstrate a strong pro-NATO bias and asks CPJ if they would they have been excluded from the list if they, too, had been killed. From Z Magazine/ZNet, February 3 2000
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AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE
MEDIA.
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