Bozic: N1’s most turbulent year

“We are being called political opponents and that is the ideal way to annul journalism,” he said on the Day Live show.   Bozic recalled that N1 had gotten threats by both e-mail and conventional mail with flyers thrown into the station grounds on several occasions and its journalists targeted.  

“Our correspondent in Nis was followed by an unidentified man in a car who tried to push him down a steep street. That attacker was never found… A stone was thrown at our crew and we never found out who was responsible, flyers were thrown into our grounds saying Welcome to Luxembourg with the evident intention of provoking a reaction, we were mentioned in a negative context at new conferences in parliament, journalist Miodrag Sovilj was targeted after posing questions to the Serbian president, journalist Emina Kovacevic was targeted, our Pristina correspondent and her children were threatened on Facebook, (N1 new director) Jugoslav Cosic was targeted. The list is unbelievable when you put it all together,” he said.  

Bozic said that the people on the N1 news desk are used to daily threats but added that it’s certainly not pleasant to hear state officials calling you out. “Those are not ordinary threats when someone from the ruling party comes out with a slander and lies about staff at N1, calling them by name. They can’t feel safe. We are doing everything we can to protect them but some things are in the jurisdiction of the state,” he said.  

He said that N1 reporters have no fear and have complete freedom in their work. “Saying that someone is behind a question, labeling the person asking the question and saying that they work for someone and are not journalists. Maybe journalists who are in the service of the authorities, perhaps they have some interests or fear but we do not, we have complete freedom,” Bozic said adding that freedom is not something that gets forgiven. “There is a price and we are obviously paying it in a large number of cases which is reflected in the number of incidents that we had,” he said.