Serbian ‘Insajder’ Journalists Face Threats from Hooligans

Brankica Stanković, the celebrated journalist who heads the Serbian broadcaster B92′s flagship documentary strand ‘Insajder’, has claimed she has received death threats after her most recent broadcast.
Insider is the most respected investigative programme in the country and has just revisited the football clubs of Serbia after an investigation into football and the mafia back in February 2008. This programme concentrated on the hooligans who have gone unpunished for past violent crimes.

The implication is that hooligans, connected to those with a great deal of money within the clubs, are able to break the law without punishment.

One such incident was the murder of the Toulouse fan Brice Taton in September. Taton was stabbed in a bar on the day of the match.

Stanković listed the crimes with which the ‘ultras’ have been charged, yet have never faced prison. Other crimes of which they have been accused include involvement in the higher echelons of drug trafficking rings.  The Minister for the Interior, Ivica Dačić, has claimed the police have done everything necessary to protect Stanković, nonetheless Veran Matić, CEO of B92 has called for more to be done to protect Serbia’s journalists.

The hooligans have been making their presence more and more obvious since the riots after the declaration of Kosovan independence, a visitor to Belgrade nowadays should expect to see all manner of unpleasant graffiti campaigns in support of hooligans or against homosexuality. The newspaper BLIC printed this comic strip back in October.

I was in Serbia in July filming my MA on Serbian journalism and the new media law which threatened to stifle investigative reporting, so some claimed.  Several journalists I spoke to told me they feared Insider could not be made after the new law was put in place. Clearly those fears have not yet been justified, and the programme continues as determinedly as ever.

Below are links to the two parts of my MA, focussing on the new media law and the challenges to quality journalism in Serbia, watch it, you know you want to:

Part One

Part Two

As part of the MA I had the pleasure of interviewing Veran Matić.

He told me about the goals behind ‘Insajder’ (Translation by Danijela Čorić)

“B92 has several investigative journalism programs. Insider is one of them and it addresses the toughest and the most dangerous issues. The topics for ‘Insajder’ are sometimes worked on for more than a year. The concept of ‘Insajder’ is connected to the most important issues, like the misuses and breeches of duty which most of the time come from inside the government itself. So in most cases the government is the problem here. If you have misuse of power or a breach of duty, somebody allowed it to happen. We are trying to assign equal amounts of criticism resulting from these programs. It is not just about stocking drug dealers or mafia bosses, but also the government which often tolerates these illegal behaviors, and in many cases encourages it with corruption and connections to members of certain mafia and ‘tajkun’ (oligarch) groups. Insider destroys taboos, vividly and with lots of evidence… There are of course many more interesting themes for Insajder [in the future].”  [Interview from 18th July 2009].

Now please watch the film.

Crisis? What Crisis?

It seems at times to those of us in the UK that the ‘Credit Crunch’ will be a long, dark, unbearable period the awfulness of which is yet to be discovered.

I asked a good friend of mine, Igor Cvijanovic, a Bosnian (Serbian-Bosnian) living in Northern Serbia,  about whether the “crisis” had hit, as it seemed to be all chaos and apocalypse over here.

His answer, I thought, was worth a blog entry:

“The crisis in Serbia, and Bosnia too, has never left, actually, so this big fuss does not come like some new condition here. things did get worse, but not so much to say that people here are completely nuts and lost because of it. KRIZA [crisis] here is still measured by the 90s standards, and it’s very hard to beat those now and then you come across someone who lost their job but then there are so many people here without jobs anyway. all this is valid for serbia and bosnia too, just that bosnia has always been in deeper shit… arijana and me don’t personaly feel KRIZA yet since the load of work is the same and we still get money on time and i hope it stays that way. no one here is really worried too much yet, except for the people who work in foreign companies, but, as i told you, haos [chaos] and apokalipsa have been here for a while so it’s all relative.…”

Indeed, compared to the hyper inflation of the early 90s,  when unemployment was above 30%, things could certainly be a lot worse.

The numbers involved in the inflation are as unfathomable as advanced astronomy and the anecdotes from the time are peversely fascinating. I heard one about a friend’s neighbour who kept goats in her towerblock flat for milk, for example.

As petrol prices went up, petrol stations closed and farmers could no longer use their tractors and other equipment. Those who could not afford to buy petrol on the roadside crowded onto buses, which became too full to collect tickets.

Anything and everything that could stop working did.  As inflation accelerated the government placed price controls on the everyday commodoties, bakeries stopped serving customers as a consequence. Going without bread and burek is not easy if you’re Serbian.  Without bakeries and with farmers underproducing there was risk of famine.

The government’s next step was to postpone activation of heating, so people started using electric heaters, as a result the electricity grid overloaded and there were blackouts.

“Between October 1, 1993 and January 24, 1995 prices increased by 5 quadrillion percent.  This number is a 5 with 15 zeroes after it”, writes Dr. Thayer Watkins.

“The telephone bills for the government operated phone system were collected by the postmen.  People postponed paying these bills as much as possible and inflation reduced their real value to next to nothing.  One postman found that after trying to collect on 780 phone bills he got nothing so the next day he stayed home and paid all of the phone bills himself for the equivalent of a few American pennies.”

This also meant expensive international calls were suddenly effectively free.

There were also banknotes like this:

Monopoly money was probably literally worth more.

Throw into the potent mix lawlessness, corruption, a bloody civil war, UN sanctions and probably the world’s worst music and it puts into perspective the doom and gloom of the moment.

So cheer up!

If you are a glutton for punishment, here is a little bit more music for you, from Novi Sad’s own DUGA TV,  coming live from above the bakery down the road:

Reminds me of many a horrific bus journey through the Vojvodinian wastelands. BLJAK!

Advertising Fall Threatens Serbia’s Media

It is with some joy I bring you this blog entry….  Entirely selfish joy.  For this summer I was to be going to Serbia to carry out my MA  (readers should be aware I lived there for 3 years from 2005 to 2008), and I was afraid there was no real story to tell other than the usual “it’s hard being a journalist” and covering the ways in which Serbian journalists have become free from government influence, or not, since the fall of Milosevic.

Now I definitely have a justified topic for my MA.

The Serbian media is threatened by the fall in adverstising which will lead to a massive change in how it is to be funded and the ways advertising is to be used, as you can read at Balkan insight.

The fall in advertising income has lead some smaller and pirate broadcasters to go under and lead to staff cutbacks across the board (this of course doesn’t make me happy).

“The bleakest predictions suggest that many media companies will not survive in the current conditions, even if they make big cuts.”

The media outlets are going to the government for help.

Why Serbian advertising is in trouble?  -It says choosing a bank is like choosing a barber/ dentist/ ‘shoemaker’ respectively, probably wouldn’t be allowed in the UK, it’s fair to say..

Veran Matic, owner of B92, Serbia’s major independent broadcaster has outlined the steps his firm has taken to cut costs.

“We reduced the number of freelancers, and their work is being taken on by existing full time staff,” he told Balkan insight. He also outlined a reduction in programme production and the purchasing of films and serials.

B92 is serbia’s major news broadcaster, alongside the state-run RTS (Radio Televizije Srbije), there are fears it will cut its journalistic output and make it more challenging for the public to find good news content in their own language.

Nadezda Gace, whose surname means “underwear”, president of the NUNS (The union of serbian journalists) said that the NUNS will set up a fund designed to help journalists and also the broadcasters themselves:

“Many media in Serbia will soon face a catastrophe which will mostly affect journalists. In some media houses they have already stated to fire journalists. Our idea is to create such a fund in order to help journalists, first of all, and then the media houses too,” Gace said.

Nebojsa Bradic

At the conference propositions were put to Nebojsa  Bradic, the culture minister, who will announce the government’s strategy for the media this week.   It is likely to include relaxation of alcohol advertising laws to try and draw more money from the advertising well.

More updates when I get over there in the summer.