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IWM, 2011
Copyright © 2011 by the author & the IWM. All rights reserved. This
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without written permission from the author.
Ivan Angelovski
The Sad Truth About Serbian Media
There were no analytical reports in newspapers. No public debates on
TV. Radio did not broadcast it, and it was removed from the Internet. You could
not read about it anywhere. Well, almost – only if you knew exactly what
you were looking for.
The Anti-Corruption Council of the Serbian government issued a “Report
on Pressure on and Control of Media in Serbia”. The results were shocking.
It showed evidence that some of the most influential Serbian media is almost
completely dependent on the political and business elite.
The Council organised a round table and gathered the most important media
experts in Serbia to present the report. Fifteen members of the press attended
the conference, so the public could be well informed.
Unfortunately, almost none of the newspaper, TV, radio or Internet media
outlets covered the story. And if they did, it was completely stripped of all
the juicy details.
As Vukasin Obradovic, head of the Independent Journalists Association of
Serbia, predicted at the round table: “We will get the answers to all
the questions raised at the meeting [...] when we see which media will publish
the reports from this meeting and to what extent.”
Only two dailies and two TV stations featured a story about it. A short one.
“Journalists from one Internet based media said they had published
the story about the round table, but they had to remove it, after people from
above had told them to get rid of it”, the Council claims.
This is the sad truth about Serbian media.
Full Control
The report showed that the 'freedom of speech principle' in Serbia is confronted
with a full scale of problems.
Media is open to unknown private and political interests, thanks to a lack
of transparency in their ownership and the fact that major parts of their income
are generated through various types of budget payments by state-owned companies
and institutions. They are on the government payroll.
In the very first paragraph of the report, the Council claims: “[...]
the media in Serbia is exposed to strong political pressure and, therefore,
full control has been established. [...] There is no longer a media from which
the public can receive complete and objective information [...].”
Allegations are serious and the evidence, gathered after few months of research,
is hard.
The Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, headed by Oliver Dulic,
a ruling Democratic Party member, paid half a million Euros to newspaper Blic,
owned by German-Swiss publishing network Ringier Axel Springer, to publish
topical appendices about the environment.
As a result, during 2010, Blic published a number of texts, with Mr. Dulic
in a positive context: “Dulic Is Taking 200 Builders to Kraljevo”, “Environment
Better Than in Previous Year”, “1,633 Apartments Will Be Built
Next Year”, etc. At the same time, they turned a blind eye on conflict
of interest accusations that his private computer hardware company, DG Comp
from Subotica, was doing business with 70 federal institutions. This was a
big scandal in 2010.
The same scheme goes for other media as well.
The Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Health, both headed by ruling
coalition member party G17plus, spent one million Euros in total on different
media services, such as TVB92, TV Pink, daily Politika, daily Blic, TV Avala,
daily Danas, daily Vecernje Novosti, RTS (Serbian Public Broadcasting Service)
and magazine Status. Thanks to this, Mladjan Dinkic, former minister of economy,
and his party colleague Tomica Milosavljevic, former minister of health, had
the largest number of positive articles about them in aforementioned media,
although both are very controversial.
Telekom Srbija, a state-owned telecommunications company, spends 30m Euros
a year on marketing, out of which one third goes to media services. During
2008 and 2009, they spent most of this money for advertising on RTS (2.6 m
Euros), RTV Pink (2.2 m Euros), RTV B92 (1.4 m Euros), Blic (1.02 m Euros)
and Vecernje Novosti (934,000 Euros). The head of Telekom Srbija is the former
secretary general of Serbian President Boris Tadic.
“This is probably one of the reasons why it was almost impossible to
find a text that would critically examine the problem of the sale [of Telekom
Srbija] or an analysis of its business operation”, the Council says.
Besides paying for different sorts of advertising, the government and media
established seven different models of procurement: from “specialised
information services”, to different “research services”.
For example, the Serbian Agency for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises ordered
research services from the company Ringier (publisher of daily Blic) for 44,800
Euros – the job the Agency itself is registered for.
The Council concluded: “Such jobs for which federal institutions hire
media, which are not professionally qualified for research, such as this one,
were used to hide the actual nature of the cooperation between the media and
party officials, who are in charge of state institutions, because the subject
of such transactions is actually a free political promotion of party officials.”
Ownership Abuse
Opposition politicians are using a somewhat different principle. They do
not pay the existing media, but rather establish their own, so positive stories
can also be published about themselves. That is the case with daily Pravda,
owned by members of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). This also applies
to the publishing company Vojvodina Info Group, which publishes various regional
print media and whose owners are, among others, members of the Democratic Party
of Serbia (of former prime minister Vojislav Kostunica). Besides publishing
positive stories about their owners, those media are the harshest critics of
the ruling elite – this is considered major ownership abuse.
The same kind of abuse is indicative for the media owned by controversial
businessmen, in the shadows behind foreign and offshore companies.
Two Austrian companies and one from Cyprus own Vecernje Novosti, a major
national newspaper. Until recently, the real owner had been concealed; but
then Milan Beko, a controversial Serbian businessman, admitted that he owns
the paper. Considering the editorial policy of the daily, this fact had been
obvious even before it was announced. Novosti are well known as defenders of
big businessmen like Beko, or his partner Miskovic, portraying them as “patriotic
businessmen”, “intelligent business persons” and the like.
Austrian company Greenberg Invest GmbH, established by Viennese lawyer Johannes
Krauss, is the co-owner of Serbian TV Avala, and, until recently, owned the
weekly magazine Standard. It is widely suspected that the actual owner is Zeljko
Mitrovic, who also owns the biggest Serbian TV station Pink. This is contrary
to Serbian broadcasting law, forbidding that someone can own more than one
TV station with national coverage.
The same conflict is behind TV Prva and TV B92. The complex ownership structure
of those two TV stations actually hides the fact that Minos Kiryaku, a Greek
businessman, owns both.
Letter to the PM
“The Council’s reports are always ignored by the government and
the media. That’s exactly why we have started this research – because
without [objective] media there’s no fight against corruption. Because
corruption in media itself makes objective informing pointless, and public
surveillance of budget spending impossible”, says Verica Barac, head
of the Anti-corruption council of the Serbian Government.
The results that have emerged only confirmed her assumption.
“Lack of media reaction means that the ruling elite is immune to any
kind of control. They are so safeguarded within their media domination that
no report can ever hurt them”, Barac states.
The Anti-Corruption Council is a body of the Serbian government. Unfortunately,
it is one of those bodies, which government has established only to comply
with EU standards. Although they have discovered many corruption scandals,
none of their reports have ever reached the ruling elite. The same fate happened
to this report.
“Corrupted government is keeping Serbian media at its service, so it
can hide its own crime and corruption”, Barac continues. “The government
is responsible. They need to regulate this field and make media-independency
possible.”
As with all other reports, Barac has sent this one to Serbian PM Mirko Cvetkovic,
along with a cover letter proposing a meeting to discuss its findings.
She is still waiting for his response.
Links:
Ivan Angelovski is an investigative journalist at the Belgrade
TV station B92 and was a Milena Jesenská Fellow at the IWM in Vienna
from October to December 2011.
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Ivan Angelovski
