Journalists and other staff at Nova.rs have informed the public that the management of Adria News Network (ANN), which operates the website, told deputy editor-in-chief Ratko Femic that they want to bring in new journalists from pro-regime media outlets, such as Alo and Novosti.
Femic has been running the newsroom since the removal of editor-in-chief Mihailo Jovicevic.
Nova.rs said that following the takeover of the nova portal and newspaper, the new management headed by Pedro Vargas Santos David and ANN Chief News Executive Brent Sadler “have not given employees confidence that they will be able to work independently following the change of ownership, which has not yet been approved by the relevant authorities”.
“First, Mihailo Jovicevic was removed from his position as director of United Media Digital, the company that operates the Nova website and newspaper and the weekly Radar, and he was subsequently removed from the position of editor-in-chief. This happened at a time when the website was recording its highest traffic since its founding, which clearly indicated that this was a political move. After that, part of the newsroom worked under difficult conditions and amid tensions. Under such circumstances, instead of appointing a new editor-in-chief, which is a legal obligation, Brent Sadler came to a meeting with Ratko Femic with a list of journalists he wanted to hire at Nova.rs,” the journalists and employees at Nova.rs said.
“It is disturbing that Sadler, who had promised support for independent journalism, is coming under these circumstances with the names of journalists who work for media outlets controlled by the current government of the Serbian Progressive Party. It can be concluded that in this way the new management wants to create a different editorial policy and ‘neutralize’ the critical stance and investigative work that this newsroom has cultivated since its founding,” the Nova.rs journalists and staff press release added.
They also said that “an equally important piece of information that clearly indicates the direction in which the new management is moving is the cancellation of the budget for marketing campaigns on social media and Google, which directly affects the reduced reach of our articles”.
“We also want to inform the public that the management has decided to allow participants in the coming parliamentary elections to advertise on our website, at astronomical prices that perhaps only the Serbian Progressive Party will be able to afford. We suspect that the prices were set so high for this very reason, so that during the campaign our content could be surrounded on all sides by SNS advertisements. We want to clearly distance ourselves from that decision. Our position is that there should be no paid advertising by political parties during the election campaign, because we believe that under these circumstances our media platform can only be misused for political purposes,” the Nova.rs journalists and staff said.
“All this is happening 25 days before the parliamentary elections. We believe that in this way the new management wants to make us conform and silence our critical and independent voice at an important moment. We will not agree to this,” they said, as reported by Nova.rs.
N1 asked Brent Sadler for a comment.
Source: N1
