ANEM WEEKLY MEDIA UPDATE

DECEMBER 8 - DECEMBER 14, 2001

• VALJEVO POLICE TO SUE REPORTER AND BLIC

VALJEVO, December 10, 2001 Twelve police officers from Valjevo are to lay charges and Reporter and Blic because their names were published on a list alleged to be Serbian police officers of interest to the Hague Tribunal.

Valjevo police chief Milan Jankovic told media that it was the right of his officers to legally defend themselves against lies and the most severe crimes of slander defined by the law.

The police will be represented by lawyers Zoran Milic and Vesna Milunovic.

The Interior Minister has not revealed the names of the police officers involved, but cases are expected to be heard in Valjevo, Ub, Ljig and Lajkovac, indicating that the police live and work in these towns.

• RTV B92 WINS AWARD

BELGRADE, December 10, 2001 The Management Committee of the Belgrade University of Art has awarded the Great University Medal to Radio Television B92.

The station was nominated for the award by the Office of the University President.

The award was presented for support for the artistic work of students and teaching staff and for contributions to the development of new programs at the University.

• ANEM PROTESTS AGAINST JAILING OF EDITOR

BELGRADE, December 10, 2001 The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) strongly protested today against the jailing for three months of Vladislav Asanin, the former editor-in-chief of Podgorica daily Dan.

Asanin was jailed after being convicted on private libel charges brought by Yugoslav president Milo Djukanovic.

ANEM called on the appropriate bodies in both Montenegro and Serbia to amend their criminal legislation in order to prevent the criminal code from being used as an instrument to repress the media and prevent them from supplying information to the public.

• RADIO B92 JOURNALISTS WIN AWARD

BELGRADE, December 10, 2001 The Konstantin Obradovic Award for 2002 has been awarded to Radio B92 journalists Svetlana Lukic and Svetlana Vukovic, and their program Pescanik (The Hourglass).

Receiving the award, Svetlana Lukic remarked that the US Declaration of Independence described all people were created equal. “We have needed four centuries to realise that these truths are still not obvious here. Human rights here have been treated either as an imperialistic lie or as part of a special war against Yugoslavia and then we started believing that “there is something” in human rights but we believed that they belonged to us, while we were depriving others of these same rights, and now it is time to admit that those who live with us also have human rights. Unfortunately, all these present politicians of ours, with a few honourable exceptions, are not too fond of using the term human rights. This not only goes for many ministers but also for the president of the state. Still, I don’t want to spoil this nice day for myself,” said Svetlana Lukic.

• NEW EDITOR FOR SLOBODA

PIROT, December 10, 2001 Political science graduate Zoran Panic has been appointed editor-in-chief of Pirot weekly Sloboda.

The appointment was proposed by director Miloje Nesic who described Panic’s work as a writer during the Milosevic regime as particularly striking.

Panic was born in 1959 and has been a professional journalist for fifteen years. He has been a correspondent for both Borba and Nasa Borba and now works with Blic, Beta News Agency, Danas and Radio Deutsche Welle.

• MEDIA “SHOULD LEAD FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION”

BELGRADE, December 10, 2001 The Serbian Government Council to fight corruption will meet next week to elect a chairman, adopt a plan and decide what to do, member Vladimir Goati told Blic today.

“The survey published in the book “Pillars of anticorruption in Serbia” showed that, of all the professions included in this research (the judiciary, the police, state and local administration, state bodies, the parliament, health and education), the media are, relatively speaking, the least touched by corruption,” said Predrag Jovanovic, another Council members.

The Council members added that for this reason they believed that the media should be one of the most important leaders of the fight against corruption.

• ASSOCIATION OPENS REGIONAL OFFICES

BELGRADE, December 11, 2001 The Association of Independent Serbian Journalists has announced the opening of seven regional offices in Subotica, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Nis, Uzice, Novi Pazar and Bujanovac.

Executive Committee member Branko Vuckovic told media yesterday that the Association wanted to use the regional offices to support their colleagues in these cities in solving social, economic and professional problems.

He added that the new offices would have modern equipment and would eventually become press services like the Belgrade Media Centre.

Norwegian People’s Aid and the Fund for an Open Society have contributed funds for the project.

Another Executive Committee member, Filip Mladenovic, announced the “We Are Stronger Together,” project to improve the status of journalists.

“Only an economically and socially insured journalist can be a free journalist,” he said.

Mladenovic also reminded journalists that they must be prepared to fact future media owners by being organised in unions. “We are dreaming of a strong association of journalist unions because we know what awaits us,” he added.

• UNPAID POWER BILL CLOSES RADIO YUGOSLAVIA

BELGRADE, December 12, 2001 Radio Yugoslavia’s broadcast came to an abrupt halt yesterday because of unpaid power bills for the state broadcaster’s shortwave centre in Bijeljina, Republic of Srpska.

Radio Yugoslavia issued a statement saying that the shortwave centre owed about nine million dinars to the Bijeljina power authorities for the past two years.

The broadcaster warned that the power cuts could cause damage to sensitive equipment worth fifty million Deutschmarks.

Radio Yugoslavia management say they have warned the Federal Government, which owns the broadcaster, about the situation several times this year but not had an adequate response.

• BEGINNING OF THE END FOR STATE MEDIA

BELGRADE, December 12, 2001 “What has happened to Radio Yugoslav will inevitably happen to TV YU Info and other public media,” the editor-in-chief of TV YU Info told Glas javnosti today.

“This is all due to debt inherited from the former period,” said Predic.

“Privatisation is one solution but the Federal Government has put this solution on hold. Despite constant warnings, the worst has begun to happen. Soon we can expect phone lines and power being cut. Employees in the public media are not receiving salaries, quality people are leaving and, if something is not done urgently, we could talk about the end of public media. If this urgent topic is postponed yet again, the end will come next year because of the low annual budget. For example, the figure which has been mentioned is the amount at the disposal of BK TV for one month,” said Predic.

• RADIO YUGOSLAVIA TO RESUME BROADCASTING

BELGRADE, December 13, 2001 Radio Yugoslavia will resume broadcasting in two days after the Yugoslav Government offered to cover the radio’s debt to the Bijeljina Electric Power Company, Yugoslav Information Secretary Slobodan Orlic said yesterday.

Orlic said the Government was unable as yet to pay the nine million dinar debt, but that the sum would be “calculated into next year’s budget.”

He said the Government would soon discuss the decree by which all companies within Radio Television Yugoslavia should become independent. These include TV Yu Info, Filmske Novosti, Jugoslovenski pregled and Internet Yugoslavia.

Orlic confirmed that Borba’s financial situation was under examination, after which the media house would be transformed. The government is currently seeking experts to do the same for Radio Television Yugoslavia and the Tanjug news agency.

• NUNS OFFICE IN BUJANOVAC 

BUJANOVAC, December 13, 2001 Under a program of regional development, the Independent Association of Serbian Journalists (NUNS) is open offices in Bujanovac early next year.

NUNS say it expects this will help establish better cooperation between journalists and the NUNS members at the head office in Belgrade.

There are only around twenty NUNS members in the seven municipalities of the Pcinj district and just one in Bujanovac.

NUNS hopes to attract Albanian as well as Serbian representatives.

• MATIC: "DEFINE THE MEDIA POLICY BEFORE ISSUING FREQUENCIES "

BELGRADE, December 14, 2001 The relationship between the national and the regional must be defined before broadcasting frequencies are distributed, Veran Matic, chairman of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) told Fonet on Thursday.

The management committee of Studio B has proposed certain provisions of the Broadcasting law be altered so that national frequencies are issued within a year and regional within a period of two years.

Commenting on the initiative, Matic said: “The main thing that needs to be done before the distribution of frequencies is to reach an agreement on the actual number of national frequencies as well as on the number of regional and other frequencies, so some regions would not feel deprived, in case too many national frequencies are distributed or in case there are too few national frequencies”.

Matic criticised the delay in passing the legislation as absurd. Certain television stations such as TV Pink “rely considerably on the Radio Television Serbia infrastructure,” said Matic, insisting that “everyone, and under the same conditions” should be allowed to use the RTS facilities.

“ANEM insists that temporary solutions be introduced before the passing of the Law, to issue temporary licenses to the independent electronic media that would be valid until the results of the competition are released,” said the ANEM chairman.

This way, “the independent media could get some kind of security in the transitional period, and B92 can try to get wider coverage, that would allow economic profitability,” he concluded.

• INCIDENT IN INTERCONTINENTAL

BELGRADE, December 14, 2001 The leader of DOS member party New Serbia, Velimir Ilic, allegedly assaulted a journalist in Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel tonight over an article linking him to the illegal tobacco trade.

Nedeljni telegraf journalist Dragan Novakovic told Radio B92 that Ilic, who is also mayor of the central Serbian city of Cacak, called him earlier this evening and asked him to come to the hotel.

“Ilic greeted me and told me that now my head and my boss’s head were on the line. He then grabbed me by the throat and tried to punch me, but I ducked. He tried again. Fortunately his bodyguards were there. They were great. They grabbed Mr Ilic and shielded me from him”.

As Novakovic was leaving, he said, Ilic was still threatening him and saying he would close Nedeljni telegraf down.

Ilic, speaking to B92, denied assaulting Novakovic, claiming that the journalist had burst into a meeting with potential investors in the tobacco industry.

“He simply asked for an interview,” said Ilic, adding that he had refused this request and sent the journalist on his way, saying “Shame on you. I can't stand you or the kind of things you write”.

Ilic also denied that he had invited Novakovic to come to the hotel.

“There was a meeting going on. There were people from Cyprus, a large delegation … He burst into the meeting without introducing himself,” said the Cacak mayor.

Novakovic claimed that the incident resulted from his recent article in Nedeljni telegraf under the title “Velja Ilic’s Cypriot Partners Part of the largest tobacco mafia in Europe”.

The article dealt with Ilic’s involvement in a shipment of cigarettes confiscated in Thessalonica.

Both Ilic and Novakovic have said they will lay criminal charges over the incident.

source: ANEM
published by: Roland Brunner rbr@medienhilfe.ch date of release on this site: 19-12-2001

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