After almost two decades of existence of the Regional Information Agency Jugpress from Leskovac, the main and responsible editor Ljiljana Stojanović your portal regulates the labor market.
She had to, she says, because of numerous financial pressures that she and her colleagues could not withstand. Even for that move, the mayor of Leskovac, Goran Cvetanović, told her that it “costs the state about thirty thousand”, Ljiljana Stojanović tells DW.
Jugpress, whose founder is a non-governmental organization, has been a target of the authorities since the beginning because it opens up topics that politicians don’t like and reports critically on the spending of budget money. It is precisely for this reason that the budget money is allocated to the media through media contests or through other channels, is not intended for this medium.
“The money we received at the media competition in Leskovac was significantly reduced, and in other municipalities and cities we didn’t even get anything,” says Stojanović.
“In addition, Jugpress has never had any advertisements, because who will have advertisements here is determined by the mayor, and also, unlike other media according to Leskovac, only Jugpress does not have any monthly arrangements with companies that have budgets for information.”
Mental anguish claims
The problem, Stojanović continues, is when only what the local opposition says is conveyed. Thus, Jugpress is the target of three lawsuits, as it says, by the most powerful company in Serbia, the Millennium Team, because it conveyed statements from the press conference of an opposition party. Although a dozen media reported, Jugpress was the only one to win lawsuits demanding astronomical damages.
The support of newspaper associations, other media and colleagues in Serbia followed, a big campaign was launched, which helped Jugpress to turn things in their favor, our interlocutor is convinced. Two lawsuits were dismissed, and the third was withdrawn by the owners themselves.
At a time when there have been no donations from international sources since January, how can the media survive, Ljiljana Stojanović wonders. He says that without the local media, the wider community would not know about the numerous problems in the rest of Serbia, and that it is precisely the correspondent network and the variety of news thanks to the correspondents that distinguish the major national media.
“In Belgrade, they wouldn’t even know how the former mayor of Niša spent the budget money if it weren’t for the local media,” concluded the editor of Jugpress.
And the former mayor of Niš, Dragana Sotirovski, has been in custody for half a year. Ljubica Jocić, the deputy editor-in-chief of Južni vesti, which was the first to write about it, does not think that their text directly influenced the arrest, but that all their writings were confirmed by the state auditing institution.
“If someone spends budget money, it is logical that they should be under the spotlight. We are here to inform citizens where their money is spent, and to help state institutions do their job,” Jocić told DW.
Ignoring and physical attacks
Unlike Jugpress, Juzne vesti has a programming company behind it in the ownership structure and has not participated in media competitions for a long time, but is still under numerous pressures from the authorities.
Their questions remain unanswered, and they are not even invited to press conferences. The threats became more frequent, and there was also a physical attack on a journalist from Južni Vesti.
“When there was a student protest and a SNS meeting in Niš on the same day, from a group of SNS supporters guarded by a police cordon, a man approached her, grabbed her hand and wanted to take her phone and threatened her. The police did not react, more precisely, they reacted by removing her,” says Jocić.
Again, there was a reaction from journalist associations, media and colleagues throughout Serbia, and the case was reported to the prosecutor’s office. He’s not in court yet.
Jocić reminds that this spring, the only daily newspaper south of Belgrade, “Narodne novine”, founded in 1949, was shut down. On the other hand, it is open, as the “Niš Informer” says.
Non-existent new television
We are talking about the new Niš TV, which is not registered either with the Agency for Business Registers or with the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media, but it has daily programs and top officials as guests.
It went on the air for the first time on the very day when a journalist from Južni Vesti was attacked, and the first guest of this television was Aleksandar Vučić. From May 18 to today, numerous ministers have passed through that television, and the director is facing a series of criminal charges because his television officially does not exist.
Several professors of the First Niš Grammar School “Stevan Sremac” filed criminal charges because of the report in which “who pays the blockading professors” is considered. The directors of the Media and Reform Center also sued the television because critical media were called “fascist” media in the program. They were also sued by the professor of the Faculty of Philosophy, Dušan Aleksić, because they insulted him in the program.
The director, editor-in-chief and co-owner of Niš TV, Bojan Avramović, did not respond to our invitation for an interview.
On the other hand, Dušan Aleksić from the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, says that the extraordinary and conflict situation we are living in contributes to the suffering of the local media.
They have limited resources, and the government has unlimited resources, says Aleksić, and this is especially pronounced in places where everyone knows each other. Blackmail, threats, senseless lawsuits are more often used there.
Courage of journalists
“When you have an occupied country, then the economy is also subordinated to the interests of individuals, and often large companies are ordered not to advertise through local media, which of course threatens their survival,” Aleksić told DW.
“I think that people who work in the media today are the bravest because they are under pressure from all sides,” he says and adds that there have already been “terrible” intimidation, attacks and burning of journalists’ houses in Serbia.
“The situation in the media in Serbia has never been worse, in fact it is catastrophic. The media should control the government, to prevent various corrupt activities and everything that negatively affects the lives of citizens. There are few media that deal with it, and even those that do, the government tries to stop it. In the end, I think we don’t have media at all,” concludes Aleksić.