Rade Veljanovski: The diseases of the media system will not be cured until the elections

Temporary supervisory body for media monitoring during the election campaign (PNT), which is the result of negotiations between the government and the opposition with the mediation of representatives of the European Parliament on improving election conditions, presented a report on political pluralism on Serbian television before the election campaign. The monitoring results showed that the percentage representation of the non-parliamentary opposition is higher on almost all observed televisions, that pluralism is more prevalent than before, but also that the differences compared to the previous period are not large.

For the co-chairman of the Supervisory Body, Radet Veljanovski, there is no doubt that even with the naked eye one can see that certain television stations, above all Happy and Pink, "excessively push the government in a positive light, while there are traces of non-parliamentary opposition".

Veljanovski tells "Vreme" that monitoring alone cannot improve anything, but only to determine how the media behave and to point out to the Supervisory Body where the problems are. He adds that it is impossible to cover all issues and all aspects, and that is why it is necessary to present the results descriptively so that "it is completely clear what it is about".

Disagreement about the "general impression" of the media's behavior before the start of the campaign was the reason for disagreement within the PNT members, which is why Olivera Zekić, co-chair of this body from the ranks of the REM, distanced herself on behalf of the members of the REM, from the members who were chosen by political parties. However, according to Veljanovski, REM does not block the work of PNT in any way at the moment.

According to him, a part of the PNT insisted on including in the joint position that, for example, Pink television in its shows like the National Daily has short content that is not reporting on any daily event at all, but promoting the government and attacking the opposition.

"In addition, we noticed that, for example, the coalition around the SSP proposed Zdravko Ponoš as the presidential candidate, Marinika Tepić as the list holder, Vlade Janković as the mayor, and this is what the report says, but negative connotations are immediately added about those three personality. In the monitoring, all this was recorded as reporting in a negative tone," explains Veljanovski.

When asked how the media should behave, if there is no unified position within the Supervisory Body, Veljanovski says that the body will call on all media to behave according to the already existing media laws, and that the need was to emphasize examples where they are violated.

Veljanovski reveals that after the PNT session, the owner of Pink, Željko Mitrović, told him by phone "that he will open his program to all parties, and that he will give them equal conditions", but Mitrović does not know whether they will take advantage of that.

Veljanovski has no "illusion that Pink TV will change completely", but assesses that if they are thinking about it, "that's some progress", and that it's nice to hear that, but "until you see it on the screen, it means nothing means".

He also assesses that the behavior of the television is far from ideal, and that one should not have the "illusion that everything will change for these elections, nor that the PNT will manage to cure the extremely large diseases of our media system."

The presence of the non-parliamentary opposition increased on both public services (RTS and RTV), and reporting on the parties was neutral. Pink devoted about 8 percent of its program to the opposition in a negative tone, while Happy television reduced the presence of the non-parliamentary opposition even more compared to before. The largest part of the political program was devoted to political analysts, and over 20 percent of the contributions were negative towards the opposition. The report states that criticism of the government dominates on N1 and Nova S televisions, which was recorded as a negative tone. N1 devoted 19 percent of its time to non-parliamentary parties.

According to the methodology chosen in November, the monitoring includes televisions N1 and Nova S, and not some other cable televisions.

"It would be good if everyone was monitored, but there are 380 electronic media in Serbia, so that is simply impossible." I would like Palma plus or Studio B to be monitored as well, because we know how they report. But the televisions with the greatest coverage, influence and interest were selected," explains Veljanovski and concludes that other researchers, such as BIRODI, observe the same televisions as PNT.

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