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On May 4, Beta News Agency marked its 30th anniversary: the day it broadcast its first news item and officially commenced operation.
Former BETA editor-in-chief, CEO and co-founder Ljubica Markovic explained that the first news item was aired following weeks of simulations to ensure the wire service launched properly.
“Until that point, we had produced numerous sample articles, built our team and visited potential clients. Then, on that May 4, we decided that the time was ripe to go public. So for thirty years now, we’ve celebrated May 4 as the day BETA opens its doors,” Markovic said.
She went on to say that none of them believed BETA would last a full three decades given the countless challenges the agency has faced, but that BETA has endured by providing accurate and reliable information. The news agency, she said, was born in hard times: during the dissolution of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war. Registered in 1992, BETA began operating two years later.
At the time, five of its eight co-founders left the government-run Tanjug news agency, while the rest had worked for the press: the daily Politika and the weeklies Vreme and NIN. According to Markovic, their decision was inspired by a common goal: to work free of manipulations and political dictates.
BETA will officially mark its jubilee in Belgrade in mid-May by organizing an international conference titled Mercury in the Digital World, focused on the challenges faced by informative media in the digital era. The agency will also hold two award ceremonies, rewarding the best media photo from Southeast Europe for the 21st time in the Beta’s Photograph of the Year contest and bestowing the Dragan Janjic Journalism Award for media literacy, named after BETA’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, who passed away in 2020.
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