Speech by Milos Ciric

Extended version of the statement made by Milos Ciric (Pescanik.net, Serbia) at Pan‐

European Forum on Media Pluralism and New Media, June 27th 2012, European Parliament,

Brussels

First of all, I would like to underline one, let’s say problem that we’re facing in our mutual

communication. As you know, I’m coming from Serbia and this communicational problem is

repeting itself every time when I speak to anyone who is not coming from the Balkans.

The thing is ‐ we use the same words, same terminology, but by these words we mean

different things. For example, when someone from European Union talks about freedom of

expression, and many of panelists did that today, the point of view is so much different

when you compare it with one that addresses actual problems that many Balkan countries

face everyday. Maybe you already know that vivid example, but I think is good to mention it:

it’s a story about antropologist who was visiting african tribes in order to conduct a research

about it’s way of life.

It's a short story and it goes like this ‐ antropologist came to Africa, searching for native

tribes. She saw some people who very clearly natives. She was excited when she approached

the members of the tribe and pleased by their warm welcome. They even invited her to

participate in their gathering that evening and spend the night with them. So, she gratefully

accepted invitation, expecting to participate in some exotic dance around the fire or similar.

When she came to the village, she was stunned by the scene that she witnessed. Members

of the tribe where sitting in circle in front of television set watching movie Basic instinct with

Sheron Stone on DVD player, way before the movie had it’s premiere in London. You can

imagine how schocked she was.

So, that’s basically difference between serbian media sphere and yours and, more

importantly, between our state of media freedoms and yours. The gap is huge but we in

Serbia try to bridge it with use of the internet and new media. Internet and new media

allows us freedom that we are not experiencing or practising in everyday life or more

importantly for our topic today in our mainstream media. We have basic problems with

freedom of expression and media freedoms, and I think you should know that. During this

Forum I heard a lot of concerned and well explained statements about state of media

freedoms in countries from the European Union and many useful suggestions for their

improvement.

But you have to understand that for us, these problems are dream from the future. We are,

I’m afraid, still talking about basics, we’re still fighting for free media and freedom of

expression. I will ilustrate.

Serbia is a media controlled country. That statement may sound bold, but it’s true. All of our

biggest and most infulential media outlets are controlled or in the best cases severy

influenced by political parties or individuals who are close to some political options. In May

this year, just before general election, a group of experts in Serbia published a report based



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on standards proclaimed by the Council of Europe about media freedoms. Report stated that

only 4 out of 27 basic european standards regarding media freedoms are fullfilled in Serbia

and that only 2% out of 240 editors in chief ‐ who were interviewed for the report ‐ said that

media freedoms in Serbia are granted and fully developed. That's only five editors in chief

out of 240 questioned.

South East Europe Media Organization stated that autocensoship in journalism in Serbia

became a rule in everyday media life. That's the consequence of our restricitve Law on

Media which was writen, adopted and supported by ruling parties, the Democrats and their

coalition. That Law was even supported by liberal opposition. That law brought even more

confusion and chaos in our media sphere, and more importantly it ‐ de facto ‐ proclaimed

autocensorship because of it's restrictive regulation. European Commision is also concerned,

Freedom House said that press freedom in Serbia is declining, and ranked Serbia as partly

free country, and the list of international organizations who are concerned about media

situation in Serbia goes on.

I would like to mention the most important report on media in Serbia from the last year. It

was issued by Anti‐Corruption Council. Most briefly ‐ report reveals that we don’t actually

know who owns the vast majority of media outlets in Serbia. The light of very founded

suspicion falls on politicians and the most wealthy man in Serbia who are interconnected

through common mechanism of power, wealth and influence. For example, the biggest

advertizing agencies, which are essential for commercials from which media outlets gain

their income, are owned by group of people, including the mayor of city of Belgrade and

group of people close to former Serbian president Mr. Boris Tadic. Serbia is deeply corrupted

country, corruption is obvious in almost every single part of public life, and one of the most

important and most dangerous circles of corruption strangles our media freedoms.

Also, there is an illusion about pluralism in Serbian media sphere, because we have a lot of

radio stations, huge number of TV stations and many printed editions of newspapers.

Considering only that fact, it is most unusual that on daily basis we receive the exact same

news for all of them.

We live in media controlled country, so some of us use the internet as a tool for subversion.

By using internet we see a chance to break that uniformed sound that surround us. Just few

webistes are available for content which is uncensored or critical towards government or

other institutions. One of them is Pescanik.net. In the same time there is a growth in

popularity regarding internet usage in Serbia, unfortunaltely our people have computers but

they don’t know how to use it. Around 50% of Serbian citizens have compulsory education

only or are functionally illiterate. 40% of households own a computer, but only 15% use the

internet, once a week.



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Our government doesn’t want to change that. Our educational system isn’t internet friendly,

most of our kids learn how to use modern tools of comunnication on their own. Maybe it will

sound as funny fact – but for example we are still waiting our government to enable us

internet shopping and sign all necessary contracts, we in Serbia don’t even have Pay Pal.

Just like in Russia, our political class is aware what kind of danger is ahead if everyone is

litterate enough to use internet and make educated decisions. When people become more

educated, more informed and more politically aware of their situation ‐ the next step is,

naturally, change in opinions towards government and political class in general. We can all

assume where’s that leading – to more free, more educated, more demanding citizens with

lots of questions and attitudes. I have no illusions, none of the world’s governments like

that, but ours is especially sensitive to that ‐ as they see it – threat to their positions and

power.

During elections held last month, political class didin’t count on informatically self‐taught

citizens who, during election campaign made huge difference informing themselves and

connecting with each other through the internet, using social networking and new media.

For the first time, we gathered online, not in the streets. I’m sure that you know how many

times we in Serbia were gathering on the streets during the ninties, so we broke that

tradition. I think that’s good.

As a result, for the first time in serbian political history, we had significant number of blank

votes on presidential elections and elections for parliament. Institute of blank voting is

totally unknown in our political culture. This year, we managed to spill the initiative for blank

vote from internet to mainstream media, showing it’s power.

Blank voters, and I’m one of them, are mostly people who decided to send a message that

they don’t approve unjust laws and political bargain, that they don’t approve this unjust

political system that is undermining and perverting our democracy in every imaginable way.

We were, ofcourse, marked as enemies and destructive individuals, unloyal to our young

democracy, whatever that means. They now have a nicer term for us – they call us,

irrisponsible intellectuals.

So, blank voting showed how we can use internet and new media to bring some actual

change and break that uniformed sound from all around the place. It is not much, it is not

enough, bt I think it’s a beggining, and it’s a good one.

Question from the moderator: How does all of this you said affect investigative and

indenpendent journalism in Serbia?

Journalist in Serbia have major problem when they want to investigate some social or

political issues ‐ to cut the long story short ‐ investigative journalism in Serbia is practically



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impossible. It’s well known, if you want to do investigative journalism, you need information

that is vital for public interest. We have appropriate institution for that purpose, the

Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection who could

provide information necessary for any serious investigative report. Commissioner’s authority

is claimed by the Law. Interesting thing is that Serbian law about Commissioner and this

particular field was rated as the best in 89 countries.

This ranking was made in joined research made by organizations Acces Info Europe from

Madrid and Canadian Centre for Law and Democracy. We have the world’s best law, but we

can not use it. Again, there are many problems in practice, when you actually ask for

information. There are a lot of obstruction from the government and other institutions.

When you request information, Commissioner wants to help you and he is doing excellent

job, but other Institutions are simply not answering to his requests. So, again, we have

serious problems in practice; on paper, we could be the best in the world, but in reality you

can’t make a simple step.

Allow me one more example – our Ombudsman informed us earlier this month that state

security agencies are illegaly monitoring canals of communication of undetermened number

of people in Serbia. In other words, state security agencies are eavesdroping us without

warrent of the court, which is an unconstitutional act. Ombudsman said that he is not

certain how many people are under the surveliance, but he said that that number is certainly

huge, over several thousands, and that we shouldn’t be supprised if it’s even bigger. They’re

tracking our e‐mail communication, our cell phones, you name it, and we can’t do anything

about that. Constitutional Court didn’t say anything about this matter, and the conspiracy of

silence in media regarding this is so severe, that we only read news made out of

Ombudsman’s statements. That’s not even a topic for our media.

Question from the moderator: How indenpendent online media outlets like Pescanik deal

with that uniformed media sound you mentioned, how do you break it?

The question is: so, what do you do in a country like this? How you maintaine your freedom

especially if you are an independent media like Pescanik? How do you inform your audience

and analyse our reality without being politically or financially corrupted, which is, by the

rule, the same thing? First of all, you have to be online. That’s the only way, because,

politicians own everything else. With spreading your comments and analysis through

internet with a lot of micro campaings, you become visible and percepted as trustworthy,

unbiased media. It is not easy, it’s not even very visible, but in the future, it will surely be.

On the other hand, in order to maintain your editorial independance ‐ and that I’ve learned

working in Pescanik ‐ you can only survive if you stay away of that circle of corruption I

mentioned earlier. So, if you succeed to exclude yourself from domestic rules of advertising

and other traps of our corrupted democracy, you can grant your authors and contributors a



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chance to write and speak freely, truthfully and without censorship. I realized that

’humanitarian help’ (as we call it) from our donors is very important for Pescanik’s success.

Pescanik’s webiste doesn’t have one single banner or commercial expressed in any other

form. How many websites or radio programmes in Europe do you know without a single

banner or commercial? In Serbia, besides blogs, which are not influential at all, we have

none. Pescanik’s activities are funded by foreigners, by American, European and

Scandinavian donors, organizations for democracy and human rights. We are, how Slobodan

Milosevic and most of our fellow citizens call us – foreign hacks. Every single mainstream

media outlet in the country is dependent to some of political figures with most of the money

and influence. If you want to survive, you have to have commericals in your programme, if

you want clients who are willing to pay you for that, you have to obey their rules. And the

rules are very simple – don’t ask and don’t tell. So, if you want to be independent you must

ask for help from international donors and go far away from domestic so called free media

market.

Question from the moderator: What could EU do to imporve state of media freedoms in

Serbia and to support independent initiatives?

You can make pressure, political pressure, and that’s very useful in our case. EU decided to

give Serbia a candidacy status in March this year. Our economy is in a catastrophic state,

many of our prominent economy experts say that if new government doesn’t apply very

restrictive regulation we would be having another Greece scenario, this time in Serbia, and I

don’t believe anyone wants that. So, EU can do a lot, because our political elite works

exclusevly on pressure from the outside. We can’t do much more from the inside, and it is

obvious that our efforts aren’t simply enough. We annoy them, and that’s true, but the real

power of influence is in hands of EU officials. During process of negotiation regarding

Serbia’s membership to the EU, everything can change. In that process we see not only the

opportunity but a real chance to bring true democracy to our country and to free our media

sphere.

We will countinue to do the exact same thing as so far – to protect this narrow space of

freedom of expression and different voice to be heard, to bark, in other words. Because,

that’s what Pescanik basically do – we bark. We’re literally watchdogs, protecting that little

virtual space of freedom.

That mostly lonely voice has it’s fellowship, our audience recognize that effort to serve

public interest. I believe that most people in Serbia would like to live in a truly free country;

and making them realize all advantages of that is one of our tasks. That’s why new

communications and new media are so important in developing countries. It can bring actual

change, all of that – internet itself, websites, blogs, forums, online radios, social networking ‐

that’s actually new to us and can be used in increadably smart way. We tend to educate and



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inform our audience, to confront all untruthful interpretations about our past, but also

about our present and our future. I think that the best way and most contemporary one to

do that is using all possibilities that new media and the internet give us.

Milos Ciric, pescanik.net, 27/06/2012

contact: [email protected]

Speech by Milos Ciric

News & Politics

Transcript of Speech by Milos Ciric