Information and Telecommunications Minister Boris Bratina said that Serbia has absolute media freedom but that the problem is the way some media outlets report the news.
Bratina claimed not to have experienced any attempt at censorship when he appeared at a number of TV stations. Bratina’s TV appearances are mainly limited to pro-regime stations.
He said that Serbian media laws include provisions for truthful, objective, timely, and comprehensive reporting but added that not all media outlets stick to those standards.
“I read a news report today about an aggressive squirrel that attacked residents of San Rafael. That’s how N1’s reporting on the protests seems to me. We have this ‘aggressive squirrel,’ or a group of people who ‘accidentally’ throw Molotov cocktails, damage and set buildings on fire, but everything else is fine. They’re just as excited as we are about the aggressive squirrel in San Rafael,” Bratina told K1 TV.
He added that there is a somewhat “alienated” group of journalists who have worked with certain owners of media outlets for more than 30 years on one side while, on the other side, journalists who earn much less want to report the truth.
Source: N1
