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Belgrade Media Keep Kosovo Serbs in the Dark

25 09 2006  Relentlessly negative reporting from Serbia isolates Kosovo minority more than ever.

By Tijana Arsic and Tanja Matic in Caglavica and Belgrade (Balkan Insight, 25 Sep 06)

Experts on the media in Kosovo have warned that language barriers in the press and television are bolstering the Serbian minority’s negative outlook on the situation in the international protectorate.

Until 1999, only one television station served the entire territory of the province, broadcasting most programming since 1990 in Serbian with a daily half-hour news show in Albanian.

The government banned the only daily newspaper in Albanian in 1990, although several new, private journals appeared later in the decade, while Kosovo Albanians took their television news from neighbouring Albania.

After the Serbian authorities withdrew in June 1999 and the UN Mission to Kosovo, UNMIK, arrived, the local Albanian media proliferated.

With a population of only two million, Kosovo now has the largest number of electronic media outlets relative to population size in the whole of the former Yugoslavia.

The Temporary Media Commissioner, Kosovo’s media regulatory agency, says one hundred and eleven electronic media outlets operate under license in the territory.

Of these, 89 are radio and 22 television broadcasters. Almost two-thirds operate in Albanian while the rest use Serbian or are multi-lingual.

However, more media does not mean more communication between Kosovo’s ethnic groups.

Given linguistic barriers between Albanian- and non-Albanian-speakers, and the undeveloped state of most media in other languages, most minorities receive their news and current affairs exclusively from the media in Serbia.

The most-watched television among Kosovo Serbs is not a local station but Radio Television Serbia, RTS, Serbia’s state broadcaster.

The most popular dailies among Kosovo Serbs, Bosniaks and Gorani are also Belgrade-based, namely Vecernje Novosti, Blic, Kurir, Press and Glas Javnosti.

Their coverage of Kosovo, except that of Blic, has been harshly criticised by the independent organisation, Youth Initiative for Human Rights.

Its recent report condemned the Serbian media’s alleged lack of professionalism and understanding of the overall situation in Kosovo – which in turn negatively influences Kosovo Serb perceptions of their environment.

“The image of Kosovo formed by the Serbian dailies is far from accurate,” the report said.

While most non-Albanian media outlets in Kosovo are radio broadcasters, they also shy away from their own news reporting and carry reports from Belgrade instead.

According to a recent OSCE report on local electronic media in Kosovo, most are commercial entertainment outlets, of which “[v]ery few produce their own news programmes.”

The report found that “[t]hey mainly re-broadcast news from Belgrade, thus not only neglecting the reporting of events from the whole of Kosovo but giving room to a mainly Belgrade-focused reporting.”

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo itself set up a network of Kosovo Serb radio stations, KOSMA. But despite its efforts and those of local radio stations to produce news programmes, KOSMA is not the main source of information for Kosovo Serbs, but Belgrade television stations and newspapers.

Zivojin Rakocevic, editor of the monthly Glas Juga [Voice of the south], until recently the only Kosovo newspaper in Serbian, told Balkan Insight that the lack of licensed broadcast frequencies for television, radio and news agencies in Serbian left the field open to the Belgrade-based media, “which have taken a mainly negative approach to all the events taking place in the province”.

In his opinion, “the Belgrade media have not changed the pattern of reporting on Kosovo that was adopted 20 years ago,” whose language and terminology, used to this day to describe the situation, “originated during the reign of Slobodan Milosevic”.

Such views, he concluded, dovetailed with the existing opinions of Kosovo Serb readers and viewers, about 70 per cent of whom support the hard-line nationalist Serbian Radical Party, SRS.

Nikola Tomic, of the Youth Initiative, a co-author of the organisation’s report on the Belgrade dailies’ reporting on Kosovo, says they have bolstered the increasing sense of isolation among Kosovo Serbs.

The most popular media in Kosovo Serb communities, he says, are those that blatantly violate most international norms on journalistic reporting and fail to help their readers find out the truth about their society.

“These media outlets often carry disinformation, present facts out of context, serve incomplete information to their readership and regularly resort to stereotypes about Kosovo Albanians, particularly in reports on their political elite,” Tomic told Balkan Insight.

Jovanka Matic, a media analyst from the Belgrade-based Institute of Social Sciences, notes that the Serbian media is highly selective when it comes to choosing topics to report on from Kosovo.

“The issue of Kosovo’s independence and ongoing talks in Vienna are the main points of interest concerning Kosovo for the general public in Serbia,” she told Balkan Insight.

“When it comes to Kosovo, there is no pluralism of views and positions in our media,” she added. “They give precedence to the official position of the Serbian state with respect to the Kosovo problem and everything else with a critical approach to that is sidelined.”

As well as acting as a mouthpiece for government and as advocates for “the national interest”, Tomic says some of the Belgrade media go one step further, actively spreading religious and racial intolerance in and about Kosovo.

Ulpiana Lama, a spokesperson for Kosovo’s Prime Minister, agrees, saying the Serbian media abuses its monopoly on the provision of news and information to Kosovo Serbs.

“Unfortunately, Serbs that live in Kosovo are absorbing the most unrealistic account of life and developments in Kosovo and this is a situation that needs to be changed,” she told Balkan Insight.

Lama said the Kosovo government had earmarked 50,000 euros to fund media outlets in minority languages in order to stimulate programmes in non-Albanian languages.

Whether this will have any effect on the Kosovo Serbs remains to be seen. This and other initiatives may, however, find a more receptive audience among other non-Albanians groups in Kosovo who at present rely also on the Belgrade media.

Refki Alija, a journalist with Alem, a local Bosniak newspaper, said Bosniaks in Kosovo were starting to become restive about the Serbian tabloids.

“They are not trusted so much anymore,” he said, “Other Kosovo news sources are now available, so that Bosniaks, after comparing them, came to the conclusion that many Belgrade media are not objective but biased.”

Sven Lindholm, the OSCE Kosovo Mission spokesperson in charge of media training and providing assistance for setting up media outlets, says people must have the freedom to read what they want.

But he added that the current situation in Kosovo encouraged the media to carry extremist views and statements and encouraged the general public to accept them.

“It would be better if the media here began to produce more quality programming in order to inform people and not try to misinform them,” he told Balkan Insight. “This would be a healthy move”.

 

Tijana Arsic is a journalist of KIM Radio in Caglavica. Tanja Matic is a Balkan Insight correspondent. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s on line publication.

This article was published with the support of the British embassy in Belgrade, as part of BIRN's Minority Media Training and Reporting Project.