Debate Participants: Media Reporting On EU Depends On Political Will

Zoran Sekulic (BETAPHOTO/NENAD PETROVIC/DS)

The Serbian media's reporting about the European Union has been reduced to mere protocol and daily political events, and is in direct correlation with the political will of the authorities, the participants of the on-line debate "Media Challenge – European Union" assessed on Feb. 17.

The director of the FoNet agency and chairman of the Managing Board of the Serbian Media Association, Zoran Sekulic, has stated that, in general, the state of matters pertaining to the EU on the public scene directly depended on the authorities' political will.

"The political will that I see is not even close to the measure that would correspond with the platitude about EU membership being our strategic priority," Sekulic stated during the debate, organized within the project "Pulse of Europe – media trips to EU."

A senior lecturer at the Faculty of Political Studies in Belgrade, Aleksandra Krstic, has stated that the EU was "an uninteresting subject" and that it occupied no more than 10 percent of media space in Western Europe, but that the space was much greater when European subjects are reported on from a national angle.