By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Nov 8 2000 (IPS)

Serbia’s state media are in for a rough time ahead, as they try to throw off the legacy of communism and the tyrannical rule of former President Slobodan Milosevic, say analysts.

“State media are ideologically destroyed, with no idea what it means to be open,” says Lila Radonjic of Mreza, or Network, an independent TV production group. “Many made the transition simply by substituting praise for Milosevic with accolades for the new president, Vojislav Kostunica.”

The state media have spent much of their history glorifying whichever party formed the government. During the 1990s, Milosevic, his wife Mira Markovic and their socialist and JUL parties came in for high and constant praise from the state media. The media also fanned hatred against non-Serbs and presented the Serbs as the sole victims of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The most powerful propaganda tools of the Milosevic regime were state-owned Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) and 100-year-old newspaper Politika. Politika is owned by an intimate friend of the Milosevic family, Dragan Hadzi Antic.

“Employees (of the state media) are frantically trying to whitewash their resumes,” said Nebojsa Spaic of the Media Centre, which assists non-government media. “They’re suddenly screaming their support for Kostunica.”

“Journalists who are guilty of promoting hate speech, inciting hate against other nations and calling for lynching, those who wore (military) uniforms during the wars while shooting film, they will face criminal charges,” says Gordana Susa, media specialist and editor of an independent TV production, VIN.

“Others will have to learn a new skill: critical thinking,” she told IPS. “This is the hardest job, to teach people how to think,” for many do not know the difference between reporting and spreading propaganda, she adds.

For more than a decade, Milosevic’s regime discouraged people from thinking for themselves, Susa says. “More than half of the Serbian population is basically illiterate. That is why RTS was so powerful here,” Susa adds.

But, since Oct. 5, programming on RTS has changed. The station has begun airing a series dealing with how it reported such events as the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces during the Milosevic era. Some old staff, expelled from RTS at the beginning of 1990s, have returned to the station and it is their influence which has led to the airing of this series.

Many of these former state media workers had, during the 1990s, formed independent media companies, like the popular Belgrade Radio B92. B92 is also the core of the huge radio network, Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), that comprises more than 50 local stations and covers the whole of Serbia.

Sasa Mirkovic, manager of B92 and ANEM, says the independent media now have an important role to play in teaching this society how a democracy should function.

“We want to create a TV campaign to remind people that the government exists, and is responsible, to them, the people,” Mirkovic says. “Criticism will be an important factor when new authorities are mentioned.”

Snjezana Milivojevic, one of the most prominent media analysts here, thinks that the public will have to learn a basic lesson that “the media are not an instrument of government … They are a social institution, perhaps the most important one that exists in an democratic society”.

“In spite of repression, there exists a promising and respectable family of independent media that have the credibility to enable a discussion on the past, wars, crimes, and responsibility as a way of ensuring the past will not be repeated. By their support for professional standards, independent media can make a decisive contribution to the establishment of a proper public sphere and ease the process of media transition,” Milivojevic told IPS.

The new Serbian information minister, Biserka Matic, reminded domestic media to criticise new authorities as much as possible and told politicians not even to attempt to influence the domain of information. Matic lost her job as a journalist at Politika newspaper years ago because of her disagreement over the paper’s policy of approving Milosevic’s wars.

“Whoever wants the media under his thumb, should have his thumb stamped on,” she told IPS. “In the future, journalism will have to be autonomous and responsible.”

Matic said she would “personally head the column” of independent media asking to be given back “all they have been robbed of” over the past years.

Since the introduction of the notorious Information Law in Serbia in October 1998, almost exclusively independent media have been fined with more than 2.5 million US dollars on 66 occasions.

Matic also reiterated the demand put forth by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia and ANEM to impose a moratorium on foreign investment in the media that used to be close to the Milosevic regime.

Recently, TV Pink, an entertainment channel owned by a friend of Milosevic’s wife Mira Markovic, was partly sold to an Austrian company. TV Kosava, owned by Marija Milosevic, daughter of the couple, is searching for a foreign investor.

Matic said she hoped “foreigners had a good head for the market and that they were aware of how some of these television stations were born”.

The Pink and Kosava television stations were allegedly financed through money laundering schemes organised by JUL. JUL, it is said, used its power in the government to monopolise smuggling operations during the periods of international economic sanctions against Yugoslavia.

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