Pro-Regime media in campaign against N1, Nova S

The video aired on pro-regime TV stations and tabloids manipulated reports and live appearances on N1 and Nova S to make the accusations, starting from the morning shows with high ratings. They said that, following the attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally, the long-preset issue of how the media treat Vucic has been raised.

Even Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic joined in the campaign, reading out a list of terms and names allegedly used in N1 reports and by guests in live appearances to characterize Vucic. She also claimed that the video is not an example of professional media being targeted.

The video’s life started with pro-regime tabloids and spread to TV stations with national coverage.

TV Prva said that the goal of the anti-Vucic campaign is to dehumanize him in order to create justification for a mentally unstable person who might try to do what Thomas Mathew Crooks did to Donald Trump.

An N1 reporter asked Brnabic at a news conference in parliament how long the authorities would continue targeting professional media and she just read out part of the script from the video saying: “I’m not targeting anyone, you are targeting me”. She also ignored the reporter who recalled Brnabic saying that the reporter beat up people on election night. “When I quote someone from the tycoon media (a derogatory term used by state and ruling party officials for independent media) who says Aleksandar Vucic is the following: dishonest, arrogant, destructive, radioactive, head of an organized crime group, Hitler, Goebbels, I quoted what I heard on N1,” she added.

N1’s reporter asked Brnabic to comment her own derogatory statements about independent media but got no reply.
Slobodan Cvejic, a former official of the Serbian electronic media watchdog (REM), said the Parliament Speaker’s words were inappropriate. “It’s inappropriate for a woman in a high political office, such as Ana Brnabic, to launch a new wave of the propaganda war. This creates a situation in which you can’t see any of the things she mentioned on any of the media she talked about. They are being labeled by tabloids and TV stations under regime control,” he said.

The Slavko Curuvija Fund said that pro-regime tabloids published at least 628 articles attacking professional media in the space of a year, including 77 reporting tweets or public statements by Brnabic who speaks negatively about those media. These are some of things pro-regime media had to say about media critical of the authorities in 2023: Geobbels, independent sowers of hate, scum, sewers, haters, mercenaries, hate-filled media, Ustashi, those who like shooting at the authorities.

N1 reached out to the pro-regime Prva, Pink and Happy TV stations asking them who authored the video that they all aired but got no reply.