
Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic wants to control public opinion through his influence on the country’s media landscape, Neue Zurcher Zeitung said.
“For Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic, media policy has one purpose above all: to control public opinion,” the newspaper said and recalled that Vucic was FRY Information Minister under the Milosevic regime in the 1990s, imposing fines on journalists critical of the authorities and revoking the licenses of independent broadcasters.
NZZ said that little has changed in Vucic’s attitude since then, adding that since he came to power state influence on the media landscape has been steadily increasing with the state-owned Telekom Serbia playing a central role.
It said that the introduction of two new media laws has opponents of the authorities and media experts fearing that the foundation has been laid for even greater control over the flow of information. Those laws allow the acquisition of private media by the state contradicting the national Media Strategy and running counter to European Union standards. “This primarily concerns the activities of Telekom Srbija” which has bought several private cable network operators and stopped them from broadcasting United Group channels.
„These deals were previously concealed via complicated corporate constructs,” media expert Marko Milosavljevic of the University of Ljubljana, adding that the state’s expansion can be continued openly. According to the media professor, the long-term goal is to force government-critical providers out of the market or marginalize them, NZZ said.
Milosavljevic said that Vucic does not need the expansion strategy because coverage of his activities dominates government-linked electronic media nationwide.
“Media policy is not an aloof topic in Serbia; it moves people. The democratic opposition sees it as a cause of the lack of control of the powerful in the country and an important instrument of President Vucic’s rule,” NZZ said.
“Media themes have played a role in all major demonstrations in Serbia in recent years, including the „Serbia Against Violence“ marches that have been held regularly since the two mass shootings in May. They have evolved from demonstrations of sympathy and horror to expressions of much broader discontent with the prevailing conditions. The focus here is on two particularly radical boulevard stations, which, according to critics, contribute with their programming to the normalization of violence and distract attention from the grievances in the country. Media theorists speak in such cases of a „narcotizing dysfunction“ of the information. Also criticized is the state supervisory authority, which has never taken action against pro-government broadcasters despite numerous complaints about blatant violations of media ethics,” NZZ said.