Aleksandar Olenik, a lawyer and deputy leader of the League of Vojvodina Social Democrats (LSV), warned that if Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic shuts down N1 and Nova TV, “we’ll only have social networks left.”
“On November 1, we need to protect free media, because without them, there can be no elections. They’ll hunt us down, one by one, in the dark and in silence. Supporting students and defending free media are now the top priorities,” Olenik wrote in a post on Twitter.
United Group RS Beograd DOO CEO Vladica Tintor, Timothy Lincoln Pennington and Guibert Marie C. Schroyen were entered on Wednesday into the Serbian Business Registers Agency (APR) as directors of United Media Production – which includes Nova TV and Sport Klub, – United Cloud and Direct Media alongside the existing heads of those companies. This gives them the right to represent those companies with the agreement and/or signature of just one more director.
“Aleksandar Vucic isn’t backing down from his intent to eliminate media outlets managed by United Media in Serbia. Whether this move is a step in that direction remains to be seen, but I think people are more worried today than they were yesterday. Still, we’ll keep doing our work as we always have. There’s no major debate about our editorial policy or how our journalists operate,” said Slobodan Georgiev, news director at Nova TV.
Student protesters have called on all citizens of Serbia to gather for a large rally in Novi Sad on November 1, on the anniversary of the canopy collapse at the train station in the city that killed 16 people.
Source: N1
