N1, Nova, Radar and Danas are asking the United Group, their owner, to buy these media from their owners according to market principles, with the financial support of credible external investors
While Serbia is heading towards November, the month in which Aleksandar Vučić is announced that N1 and Nova will be closed, these media asked their owner – to sell them the company.
First, Television and the N1 portal launched an initiative to implement a managerial takeover, i.e. the purchase of ownership from the United Group on market principles, with the financial support of credible external investors. Colleagues from Dnevni list Danas and portal Danas.rs, Television Nova, portal Nova.rs and daily Nova and Nedeljnik Radar also followed the initiative. All these media are part of the same company.
“In these eleven years since the founding of N1, our journalists and editors have proven every day that true journalism makes sense and that it is possible to survive in an environment that is hostile to free media. During the last year, in addition to numerous professional and journalistic challenges, with a dramatically increased number of threats and attacks on our teams in Serbia, N1 is facing great uncertainty regarding its own future,” wrote N1.
They added that, after the changes in the United Group management, when he left Dragan Šolak, the public was informed that the highest state officials of the Republic of Serbia, including the president, could be involved in deciding the future of N1, and that the group’s management has close cooperation with persons connected to the Serbian state.
Four months without a response
TV Nova news director Slobodan Georgiev said that “the initiative of the management of N1 to carry out the purchase of television from United Group on market principles, appeared because there is no discussion, there is no response from the management of UG”, and that if you do not get answers and an opportunity to talk for four months – that is also some kind of response.
“We have been trying throughout the summer, with all our colleagues, to get some answers. We have not received any answers, any guarantees that we will work. The only thing we have heard is that they are not under political influence, which is problematic, because we have heard recording of Sten Miller and Vladimir Lucic”, said Georgiev.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Research Project (OCCRP) released an audio recording of a phone conversation between UG Director Stan Miller and Director of Telekom Serbia Vladimir Lučić, in which they talked about the dismissal of Aleksandra Subotic, the executive director of United Media, which owns N1, the Serbian TV channel that documented nine months of anti-government protests.
In a joint statement, the chief editors of Nova newspaper and Nova.rs portal Ranko Pivljanin and Mihailo Jovićević state that it is necessary to find a new investor because “they owe it to the readers, whose number is measured in the millions, and to fellow journalists, editors, photo reporters, editors, and finally to the public, who have been loyal to us all these years and whose trust and loyalty we do not want to lose.”
Source: Vreme
