BELGRADE: Serbian demonstrators gathered for a rally outside a pro-government television channel on Saturday, branding it a “propaganda tool,” in the latest of nearly five months of mass protests.
Holding banners “Manipulator, not a journalist,” waving Serbian and university flags, and blowing whistles, student organizers called on citizens to join the demo in front of the offices of Informer, a television station with a tabloid newspaper of the same name.
“Informer has been spreading numerous lies and falsehoods for a long time,” said Bogdan Vucic, a student at the Belgrade Faculty of Political Science.
The nationwide wave of student-led protests against state corruption has raised pressure on the nationalist government of President Aleksandar Vucic.
It was sparked by the deadly collapse of a roof at a newly-renovated train station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city, in November.
Since the beginning of the protests, pro-government media have portrayed student demonstrators as “foreign agents,” alleging they are funded by the opposition and plotting a “coup d’etat.”
Bogdan Vucic said one of his student peers had become a target of both the Informer TV station and the tabloid.
“They have published information about his family that goes against the most basic standards of decency, not to mention journalistic ethics,” he said.
According to the Press Council — the regulatory body that monitors newspapers — Informer violated the Serbian journalists’ code of ethics 647 times in 2024.
Many newspapers and channels in Serbia are owned by people with close ties to the government and regularly echo its talking points.
Tabloid Kurir said students “terrorize Belgrade.” Informer alleged they are paid by US aid agency USAID and billionaire George Soros — a regular target of right-wing conspiracy theories.
Another pro-government broadcaster, Pink TV, branded the protest movement an uprising supported by Kosovo, which broke away from Serbia in 2008.
“Such narratives contribute to making students enemies of the state — it creates a violent atmosphere and divisions,” said Bogdan Vucic.
“That’s why we want to put an end to what we could call propaganda — very dirty propaganda.”
Informer is among the most widely-read newspapers in Serbia, with 57,028 copies printed daily. It is cheaper than its competitors at just 40 Serbian dinars ($0.36) a copy.
The group claims its TV channel is the “most watched among cable networks” in the country.
Like other pro-government outlets, Informer benefits from public funding — through advertising purchased by state operator Telekom Serbia — and exclusive interviews with the country’s leaders.
Meanwhile, “the situation for independent media in Serbia is increasingly dire,” to the point where they risk disappearing, said Slobodan Georgiev, news director of television channel NOVA S.
According to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, the majority of Serbian media derive their income from advertising and opaque public subsidies — both sources largely controlled by the ruling elite and dependent on the media groups’ political alignment.
“Advertisers close to the government, as well as state-owned companies, completely bypass independent media,” said Dragoljub Petrovic, editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Danas.
Critical media and journalists are subjected to various forms of pressure, including vindictive lawsuits, public insults, and being labelled traitors.
“Independent journalists face relentless pressure, including direct attacks from the head of state and leading figures of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party,” Georgiev said.
In early March, the president called a journalist who had covered the protests “an imbecile colluding with the demonstrators,” prompting dozens of reporters from southern Serbia to refuse to cover the president’s activities in protest.
On Wednesday, a television campaign aired on national television labelling journalists from two opposition-aligned networks — TV N1 and Georgiev’s TV Nova — “enemies of the state.”
“Unless there are real political changes in the coming years, it is likely that no media outlet will remain safe from the influence or control of President Aleksandar Vucic’s cabinet,” Georgiev told AFP.
Earlier this month students blocked the headquarters of Serbian national television (RTS) in Belgrade for a day, after one of its journalists referred to them as a “mob.”
To reach people in smaller towns across Serbia — where residents often rely on state-backed media that echo Vucic’s ruling party line — protesters have spent weeks criss-crossing the country on foot.
Contacted by AFP for comment, Informer’s editor-in-chief did not respond.