*** State Television between Djindjic and Kostunica
** Who Will Control the Ruins of TV Bastille
Late in the afternoon on October 5, after two hours of interruption of
the programme on all three �state� TV channels, the inscription �New
Radio-Television Serbia� appeared on the screens. To this day, that
remained the only thing that is new about it
AIM Belgrade, July 29, 2001
It is true that even publication of news provided by agencies without
any selection according to political correctness was a Copernican
revolution in relation to the manner in which Radio-Television Serbia
(RTS) carried out its mission of informing the public in the past
decade. In big protests of the opposition in March 1991, RTS earned the
inglorious nickname �TV Bastille� which was defended by the regime by
tanks more resolutely than any other institution of power. This led to
its proclamation �a legitimate military target� of NATO bombing in 1999
and finally to setting of its building on fire on October 5 last year.
The new authorities manifested a more than symptomatic indifference to
the developments in the national TV station. From the outside it seemed
that settling affairs in it would be left to �internal forces� which,
judging by the faces that appeared on the screen, were headed by former
editor of TV Belgrade information programme Nenad Ristic, former sport
journalist and pensioner Petar Lazovic, journalist specialised in
economy Milorad Petrovic and Aleksandar Crkvenjakov who had left TV
Belgrade in the beginning of the nineties and who was remembered as the
editor of an entertaining show. Their different experiences influenced
the character of the prime time news shows: Ristic and Petrovic have not
managed to manifest anything more than the notorious obsoleteness of the
�old school� of TV journalism from pre-Milosevic�s era, Lazovic added
his equally outdated �charm� and enthusiasm about the winners, while
Crkvenjakov, thanks to the years spent outside media, was the only one
that made the impression of a new face and certain, not too pronounced
professionalism.
If one disregards the newsreaders that overnight became editors and
journalists, nothing significant has changed on national TV. Fifteen odd
prominent protagonists of Milosevic�s propaganda disappeared from the
screens, a few were sacked, but majority of those who claimed that �they
had just done their job� not only remained, but even wish to continue to
work. The new acting management has not succeeded in getting rid of the
latter even by a drastic reduction of the already miserable salaries. It
did not make matters easier that the authorities took forever with
nomination of the management board of RTS, but the obvious sluggishness
just underlined certain other things. On the one hand, electronic media
that equally successfully as RTS helped maintain Milosevic�s regime in
power, have experienced just slight changes, while RTV Kosava owned by
Marija Milosevic and �YUList� RTV Pink in a very dubious way changed the
owner and the ownership structure, respectively. On the other hand, the
demand of Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) that
ownership transformation of at least electronic media be suspended until
the law on information and telecommunications is passed has not produced
any effect except verbal support of ministries in charge. The public and
journalists were busy guessing who in DOS was �taking over� control of
the media, who certain newspapers belonged to, who, how and how much was
paid for undisturbed broadcasting of essentially unchanged programmes �
except that those who had until recently been enemies and traitors
became favourites.
For months, leader of Reform Party of Voivodina and a journalist,
Miodrag Isakov, was believed to be a candidate for director general of
RTS and even made statements in this sense. Among other candidates the
most frequently mentioned names were those of Gordana Susa, former
journalist in news programme of RTS and presently at the post of the
president of NUNS, and Ofelija Backovic, director of RTV Pancevo, the
station that in the last months of Milosevic�s rule was the only one
that broadcast news (partly covering Belgrade) that the regime did not
control, but strongly jammed. The finally established Management Board
of RTS headed by theatre director Dejan Mijac, decided to appoint
Aleksandar Crkvenjakov to the post of director general.
Judging that he was lucky for having left the news programme in the end
of the eighties, and two years later RTS altogether, Crkvenjakov says:
�I left of my own free will � all they could do was take away my pass�.
Ten years later, this time from the post of director general � from
which his predecessor Dragoljub Milanovic had gone directly to jail for
threatening people�s lives during NATO bombing and financial
mismanagement and after that, Crkvenjakov explains that he returned to
RTS in the evening of October 5 because it had �always been the house I
belong to from which I was chased out by the �uncouth��. When he came he
found �too many sins, too many expectations, too little money, too few
experts, too scarce equipment�, problems that will be very difficult to
solve. �I know it sounds bad, but the only way we can preserve and put
national RTV on its feet is re-introduction of a subscription fee�, he
says. �There is no such thing as a commercial public broadcasting
company, in the world they all live off public revenue�. He pleads for
public support in this undertaking; concerning the risk of failure, he
declared: �I have already gone once and it won�t be difficult for me to
do it again. I will go away when I conclude that the force of entropy is
greater than our energy to reverse it; or when I conclude that I, as a
man with no party to back me, have no force to resist conflicts among
parties which the fragile honour of the system will have to pay for�.
The first signals that somebody will have to pay because of the
conflicts of political interests within the ruling coalition arrived
from the Politika. About ten days ago, Darko Ribnikar, acting director
general, discharged acting editor-in-chief of the Politika because of
the visit of Vojislav Kostunica, President of FRY, to the editorial
board which the director general had not been informed about. Along with
the punishment of degradation to the job of an associate journalist, a
guest appearance on TV Politika of the Republican Prime Minister Zoran
Djindjic was hastily organised.
This type of neurotic behavior of leaders is known ever since the days
of the foundation of opposition parties which spent a great deal of
their activities on counting the minutes and length of texts devoted to
them by media and accusing editorial boards of having �sold� themselves
to this or that leader. In the beginning of the nineties, for instance,
Vuk Draskovic considered Vreme weekly �Djindjic�s�, while Djindjic was
equally convinced that it was �Draskovic�s�. An independent opinion or
even worse the public stand of that same weekly that, despite all the
risks, it would support the candidacy of Milan Panic for president of
Serbia, or last year, the candidacy of Vojislav Kostunica for president
of FRY � has never been received benevolently, and still is not.
The incident in the Politika was not the only one. Last week Milorad
Petrovic, one of the candidates for the post of the editor-in-chief of
the information programme of RTS, declared that he was withdrawing his
candidacy, resigning to the post of the editor of the central news show
and leaving RTS. According to the statement carried by Beta agency,
Petrovic decided to take this step �because of great political pressure
of certain ruling parties which would turn national television into a
political instrument�. He refused to say which political parties he
meant, but that did not prevent rumours.
Gordana Susa, president of NUNS also applied for the post of the editor
of information programme of RTS. According to the information from the
RTS, the Management Board either was not happy with the candidates who
had applied (the �expected� ones did not even apply), or some potential
candidates set unacceptable conditions in order to apply.
Of course, there were interpretations that it was one in a series of
conflicts between Djindjic and Kostunica as the leaders of two most
powerful parties in the ruling coalition. Outside the sphere of the
media this conflict has led to the split of DOS group of deputies in the
Assembly of Serbia into four factions, to the demand for a profound
reconstruction of the Government of Serbia, but also to the first public
mutual accusations of coalition partners for incompetence, inconsistency
and � corruption. That is the context in which the struggle for the
control of national RTS, or rather of what is left of it, is taking
place � on top of the ruins of TV Bastille.
# Aleksandar Ciric
(AIM)
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
