PM Brnabic continues advocating Telekom interest

“Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has been repeating identical sentences which include lies about United Media for days. We think that this is a unique case of a prime minister accusing a media outlet like N1 of producing fake news and shutting itself down,” the statement said.  

“Two days ago on the (pro-government TV) Pink, Ana Brnabic waved a business document exchanged between two companies, United Media and Telekom Serbia, and made accusations that N1 was waging a political campaign. We would like to remind the prime minister that if she really wanted to reveal the truth about the dispute in public, she could have checked the facts first. The facts are these: when the United Media contract with Telekom expired, we left all our channels in place for 17 days, hoping that the other side would regulate the legal grounds to distribute the signals. The state operator did not accept a single cooperation option offered by us and the signals of our channels cannot be distributed without a legal basis if the laws of the Republic of Serbia are respected. We would like to remind the prime minister and the public that Telekom Serbia demanded that the United Group shut down the (Serbian state TV) RTS signal for the diaspora outside the country and left a million people without the programs of the public broadcaster.  

“We believe that if the prime minister had access to all the facts she would advocate respect for the law before the interests of any company instead of taking the side of the Telekom. Instead of laying the blame at our feet, Ana Brnabic could ask the Telekom what is preventing them for replying to the public call and regulating the right to distribute the N1 channel,” United Media said.