IJAS: Regime’s Goal is to Smother Free Media by Election Day

Elections (BETAPHOTO/DRAGAN GOJIC)

The goal of the regime is to eliminate free media by election day – i.e. Oct. 25 – and the rush to take over what independent outlets remain shows that the ruling coalition is worried, said Zeljko Bodrozic, the president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia (IJAS), in response to attempts to change the top editors of the Nova portal.

“The goal is clear: to, come the day and especially evening of Oct. 25, not have a single free traditional media outlet reporting on the election results or what happened [while votes were cast], but rather for Serbia to be dependent on social media. And even that is questionable, since we are increasingly resembling Turkey and it may happen that access to the Internet is downed overnight,” Bodrozic told the Oct. 12 issue of the Nova daily.

According to him, the attempts made by Adria News Network to install Marko Stjepanovic and Ivana Mastilovic Jasnic as chief editors of the Nova daily – which the Network has bought – were to be expected and one can further expect that Nova’s new owners will “begin to align their media with regime media under the pressures of Serbia’s [current] regime.”

Alluding to former Blic editor-in-chief Stjepanovic and current Blic news program and executive editor Mastilovic Jasnic, Bodrozic went on to state: “The people who transformed the Blic daily into an empty shell, who, in fact, neutered the Blic daily and portal for the regime’s benefit, have proven up to the task. With this ‘success’ under their belts, they were clearly brought in to do the same to Nova.rs.”