Journalists’ and media organisations, together with their colleagues, are calling for a rally in support of the team behind 24 Minutes with Zoran Kesić.
The rally will take place on Thursday, 10 September, at Nikola Pašić Square, beginning at 7 p.m.
Together with you, journalists want to take a walk and complete a circle that will lead us past the National Assembly, around the Presidency and back to Nikola Pašić Square – coincidentally also home to the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM). We want to draw attention to the fact that the circle is closing in, the noose is tightening around journalism that refuses to remain silent, and there are fewer and fewer journalistic necks left to squeeze. Is this really the kind of media landscape the citizens of Serbia need?
It is no longer news that the satirical programme 24 Minutes with Zoran Kesić will no longer be broadcast on Nova S. As announced, the television channel’s new owner conducted a cost-benefit analysis and concluded that the show was one of the most expensive items in the programming schedule, while its commercial impact was assessed as “marginal”.
And indeed, what are 13 years on air, 612,000 subscribers to the official YouTube channel and recognition throughout Serbia and the region compared with a single cost spreadsheet? Satire may have an audience, influence and purpose, but apparently there is no appropriate column for any of that in Excel.
After leaving a television channel with national coverage, the show continued its life on cable television. Now, after 13 years on television, it has been pushed off that platform as well, forcing its creators to continue the programme online – the alternative space to which, it seems, all content that asks too many questions is gradually being relegated.
This is not merely about the fate of a single television programme. It is about the space available for criticism, freedom of expression and the public’s right to view those in power from angles other than the one from which they look their best.
If a programme with hundreds of thousands of followers is considered “marginal” and commercially unviable, the question is: what comes next? Have the same analyses been conducted for other news and independently produced programmes? What fate awaits them?
That is why we will see you on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Come and support the 24 Minutes team and our colleagues at Nova S. Bring your good spirits, your sense of humour and a few uncomfortable questions – before those, too, are declared commercially unjustifiable.
The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, the Journalists’ Association of Serbia, the Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation, the Association of Independent Electronic Media and the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, together with colleagues from N1, Nova.rs, Forbes Serbia, Danas and Radar.
