To many, the changes in the United group look like the preparation of the “final showdown” between the authorities in Serbia and the remaining critical media. What could it look like and whether citizens can do something
On Tuesday (February 24) are the leading people N1 had a special meeting. For the first time, a man who is an almost mythical phenomenon of the Serbian media scene spoke to them in his new role – Brent Sadler (75), formerly a well-known CNN reporter, and since a few days ago, the “chief executive editor” of news in Adria News Network (ANN).
ANN is a new construction of the powerful United Group media corporation, under which their media from the former Yugoslavia are now placed. Sadler is thus the editorial superior of everyone – from N1 in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Ljubljana, through Nova television, all the way to the Belgrade newspapers Danas and Radar and the Podgorica Vijesti system.
“The message is that there are no changes for now,” one source told DW about the meeting with Sadler. “We’re really doing business as usual.”
But the leading people of the mentioned media and the general public are asking how much longer it will last “as before”. Some say – no later than the elections, which should be the most serious test for the authorities of Aleksandar Vučić. Others say they can’t even guess.
DW spoke with several sources, journalists and editors about the new turmoil on the media scene in Serbia and the region. Have the authorities in Belgrade decided to attract the media to the end and, as one interlocutor says, “not leave a grain of rice” to those who criticize them?
On a low heat
The formation of ANN and the appearance of Sadler – a man who normally lives in Belgrade, with his wife, a former colleague from CNN – came after a full year of prelude.
The investment fund BC Partners, the majority owner of United Group, first pushed minority owner Dragan Šolak out of the management. He then sold the cable network SBB to the Czech-Arab consortium, and all rights to sports broadcasts to the Serbian state Telekom.
The owners of the United Group came out of the deals heavier by around 1,5 billion euros, and their media in Belgrade have since assessed that they are in a tailspin. Especially since the recording of a telephone conversation between the then fresh head of the United Group, Sten Miller, and the director of Serbian Telekom, Vladimir Lučić, in which they hatch joint plans, surfaced.
Meanwhile, Telekom finances a large number of television stations close to the authorities and is the largest advertiser in tabloids. The same money was used to finance the Tanjuga system headed by Manja Grcic, the newly elected general director of RTS.
The critical public is therefore expecting some kind of final blow – the pacification of television N1 and Nova S, as the largest and most wealthy media among those who dare to criticize at all.
“I will disappoint you, but I don’t have any news at all,” one of the journalists from those television stations told a DW journalist. Employees work as before. “Otherwise, there is no particular panic, no one is in a hurry to look for another job. But we are on a quiet fire.”
The leading editors of television and newspapers of the United Group publicly say that they are ready to cooperate with the new editorial board and board of directors, although their statements show distrust.
“We heard from the new management that it guarantees editorial independence, and that is the least we expect from all of us who work at TV Nova,” says Slobodan Georgiev, director of news at that television.
In addition, he adds for DW, he expects the new administration to show the ability to protect them from “constant attacks from the top of the government in Serbia, which consequently lead to campaigns on television controlled by the government and on social networks.”
And the elections are coming…
Several DW interlocutors from these media can hardly believe that nothing will change. The whole operation, they say, took too long and cost too much to keep things the same.
Rade Veljanovski, retired professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences, who has extensive experience in working on media laws, thinks similarly.
“It would be naive to think that so many mechanisms of power will be removed from our government and from a large media company, and then nothing will change. It seems to me that a final showdown is being prepared in which the government would completely suppress the possibility of independent journalism,” he told DW.
All this, he adds, happens without formal prohibitions and “pseudo-legitimately”. After all, the private owner has the right to edit his media as he likes.
Elsewhere, people close to the government have bought or set up info-portals in all areas where local elections are being held this year. Two new weekly papers are announced, which could also be close to the authorities. The purges at Juronujuz, which is under the auspices of Telekom, have already been completed.
The icing on that media control cake could be some sort of emulation of the N1, Nova S and others. “Especially because, due to mass protests, the circumstances in Serbia are not going well for the authorities. They don’t want, in the run-up to the next parliamentary elections, whenever they will be, there will be media that will continue to be critical,” adds Veljanovski.
Confined space
None of DW’s interlocutors expects the sudden closure of critical television stations, nor that they will overnight start to resemble Informer and Pink television stations. Rather a light grip and changes in steps.
“I don’t believe there will be extreme things,” says one journalist. “We expect that they may appoint someone to edit the program, as a kind of link between this now editorial board and us.”
Be that as it may, the situation regarding media freedom in Serbia seems bleak, assesses Dragana Bjelica from the Association of Journalists of Serbia. “The space is narrowing, and the media should serve to open space – for criticism, for the problems of citizens. Who will the people who have been hurt by the government or some powerful person contact?”
Bjelica enumerates several media that still remain, and have been respected in recent years and decades.
However, unlike the media of the United Group, which are (for now) solidly financed, the smaller ones are doomed to survive. The ad market is controlled, budget co-financing is made a mockery of, donor programs from abroad are becoming rarer…
“It is very difficult to survive,” Bjelica tells DW. “What we do is a profession that society needs. If it comes down to personal enthusiasm and individual defense of the profession, then society is in the gutter.”
When the circumstances are bad, says Professor Veljanovski, the only thing left is to rely on one’s own strength – that is, on the audience.
“But our forces are very limited,” he says. “It is incredible that 20.000 or 300.000 citizens come to the protests, and that the newspaper Today he could never sell more than 15.000 copies.”
Serbia does not have a broad and powerful middle class, adds Veljanovski, but citizens should remember that the media and journalists exist for the sake of society. “Part of the society is democratically oriented, pro-European, wants the oxygen of freedom… and he would have to have a need for independent media and find a way to financially support them.”
Otherwise, our interlocutors say, everything will remain in the hands of the authorities and corporations. Or in the chaos of social networks.
Source: Deutsche Welle (DW), Vreme
