N1 reporter Mladen Savatovic said on Wednesday that he will sue President Aleksandar Vucic for verbally assaulting him at a news conference a day earlier.
The Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) said that the way Vucic spoke to Savatovic was inappropriate and called him to stop insulting and demeaning reporters.
Savatovic was insulted multiple times at the news conference by Vucic who avoided answering the N1 reporter’s questions.
Speaking on the N1 morning show, Savatovic said that there was always some offensive language and labeling at Vucic’s news conference but that the president reacted much more heatedly than usual to his questions about the indictment filed against Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic, Affinity Partners’ decision to pull out of the General Staff complex project and the Caciland regime-supporter tent camp in central Belgrade.
He said the hardest thing to take was Vucic’s mention of his parents and how they would react which is why he decided to file suit against the president.
Savatovic said that it’s time to say – no, I won’t take this form of violence any longer. “The whole thing was exhausting and stressful as in most cases whne we report from the president’s news conference. I was called by people later to say well done for how I stood up to him and to hear how shaken I was,” he said.
“I think he lost control compared to earlier news conferences. There has always been labeling and targeting since I have been covering them but I think that yesterday’s questions were especially hard for him which is why he lost control,” Savatovic said.
He added that his questions were not heard on live TV because there was no microphone for reporters as was the custom to date. According to him, Vucic and his staff counted on the questions not being heard so that he could twist things around and make it look like he was being verbally assaulted.
Source: N1
