Final Program Report Promedia II/Serbia Program
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Final Program Report ProMedia II/Serbia Program (Cooperative Agreement No. CA#169-0022-A-00-9101-00) September 27, 1999 – June 30, 2007 (with addendum to cover extension period July 1, 2007 – September 30, 2008) Submitted October 8, 2007 Please direct any questions about this report to: Mark Whitehouse Director, Media Development Division IREX 2121 K Street, NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20037 (202) 628-8188 [email protected] Final Program Report ProMedia II/Serbia Program CONTENTS I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY II. INTRODUCTION III. PROMEDIA II/SERBIA PROGRAM RESULTS FRAMEWORK IV. PROMEDIA II/SERBIA PROGRAM ACTIVITIES V. CONCLUSIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED Page 2 of 65 Final Program Report ProMedia II/Serbia Program I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The USAID-funded ProMedia II/Serbia program began in October 1999 as a follow-on to the ProMedia I program. It concluded on June 30, 2007. During this eight-year period in Serbia, the political context was a roller coaster for the media sector. Under Milosevic, the independent media was severely repressed. The Public Information Law was used as “legal” justification for confiscating equipment, imposing unrealistic fines, closing down media outlets and sending journalist and editors to prison. Immediately following the end of the Milosevic regime in October 2000, it was thought that more democratic laws that provided for access to information, a right to free speech, fair allocation of frequencies and license would be enacted. However, the newly elected government was not as supportive of media freedom as was anticipated. The independent media suffered severe economic pressures, a lack of a legal framework, political pressures and social pressures between 2001 and 2007. In addition, the media also had to learn how to appeal to audience needs in order to become sustainable businesses rather than serve as tools for political opposition. Despite these difficulties that continued at the time of this writing, it is apparent that the Serbian independent media is resilient and dedicated to providing professional and objective information to the Serbian public of all political and ethnic backgrounds. In response to the need for Serbian citizens to have access to indigenous information regarding the status of their country and to garner support for democratic reforms in Serbia, USAID designed the program with the overall goal that independent and sustainable media provide citizens with objective news and information. To achieve this goal, the ProMedia II program did the following: help independent media develop beyond merely re-establishing themselves in the new democratic environment and move them towards economic self-sufficiency; contribute to developing their capacity to employ professional staff; help rebuild the business sector in Serbia through their editorial content and programs and provide up-to-date and relevant information for entrepreneurs and small businesses; support the institutional media infrastructure within the framework of new licensing laws for media; help with the drafting and implementation of those laws so that media have access to information and can operate in a fair environment; and provide journalists and media managers with the skills and resources necessary to move towards increased professionalism, especially when covering topics that go beyond the Serbian media’s traditional political coverage, such as economic, legal, ethical and social issues. Throughout the program, IREX worked with media partners so that they could provide Serbian citizens with objective, fact-based, and useful information. ProMedia II has completed some of the major steps toward facilitating a fair and independent media in Serbia and provided basic training and professional development for media outlets. IREX also worked to strengthen the media organizations and give them the tools to survive in an uncertain market and regulatory environment. Many of the media outlets with which IREX worked are either 100% or nearly sustainable. Specifically, these stations can support their operational costs and rely on donor funding mainly for special programming. Important examples of sustainable outlets are RTV B92, BETA news agency, Radio City, Radio 021, and Radio OK. See Annex 5 for a list of IREX media partners. The overall impact of the ProMedia II program is that it was able was to facilitate media development so that television and radio outlets contributed to democratization in Serbia. Today, there are dozens of media outlets in both urban and rural regions that produce objective and professional content. This independent content significantly influenced the political situation in the nation in 2000 and it is widely accepted by local media experts and the international community that the media played a significant role in ending the Milosevic regime. Media experts agree that today the content of the news media is more moderate, supportive of democracy, and willing to tackle difficult and previously under-examined topics including the war, the crimes of the Milosevic regime, and corruption. The Serbian people have better information than they did before. Additionally, the public has more high quality programming that includes investigative reporting, balanced news coverage, and special topic programming that is moving the nation toward democratization and EU ascension. Page 3 of 65 Final Program Report ProMedia II/Serbia Program II. INTRODUCTION For Serbia's independent media, 1999 and the beginning of 2000 demonstrated the Milosevic regime’s continuing efforts to keep the independent media weak and fearful. At the end of 1999, in a rare interview to domestic media, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic indicated that he was particularly displeased with what he characterized as "lax implementation" of Serbia's Public Information Act despite the several millions of dinars in fines levied against the media in 1999. In 2000, the government stepped up its efforts against independent media: Studio B and B-292 had key transmission equipment stolen, ABC Grafika, the only independent printing house in Belgrade, was forced into bankruptcy due to fines imposes by the regime and Vecerne Novosti was taken over by the state when it began critical coverage of the regime. To judge by the words of Milosevic, who singled out the impudent behavior of the independent press as one of his most pressing political concerns, the Serbian government clearly continued to see the independent media as the main threat to its continued power and authority in the year 2000. This illustrates the tremendous change Serbia's political climate has undergone in the period that followed NATO's air strikes, which ended in June 1999. During the 88 days of NATO bombing, all media in Serbia were subjected to stringent state censorship, and state officials pronounced themselves satisfied with even the independent media's patriotism. Less than a month after the lifting of war censorship, the regime went back to its favorite political sport of calling the free press "treasonous," "quisling" and "fifth- columnist," a sell-out to the Western aggressor and NATO-press. Simultaneously, the regime applied additional pressure on the independent media through speedy trials under the Public Information Act, convicting journalists and editors to huge fines for merely reporting on leading opposition parties' public statements. The most notorious examples are the three December 1999 trials of dailies Blic and Danas and TV Studio B, for reporting on the Serbian Renewal Party's accusations against state officials in the case of an apparent assassination attempt against its president, Vuk Draskovic. Accurate reporting of public statements by opposition parties was no shield against the arm of the state and the Public Information Act was used as the regime's principal weapon against an independent media. The harassment of journalists and editors took many forms, but the laws on the books at the time clearly served another short-term purpose besides political repression and discrimination, they aimed for financial ruin of select media organizations. The most striking example of such ruin was the demise of two publications in 1999, the magazine Evropljanin and the daily Dnevni Telegraf. Few people in Serbia have forgotten that Slavko Curuvija, the publisher and owner of these publications, was gunned down in front of his house on April 11, 1999, and that the police investigation failed to produce suspects, indictments or plausible explanations of this apparent political crime until the government was pressured in 2004 to fulfill its obligations to investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to justice. Both the independent print and broadcast media play an important role in keeping the citizens of Serbia informed and providing professional journalism. Although they are costlier than state publications, the independent print media regularly outsell the state dailies. State media long ago lost the race with the independents in the political weeklies domain, a traditionally influential and important media sector in Yugoslavia and Serbia. The leading political weeklies in Serbia are Vreme and NIN. During the Milosevic era the leading opposition dailies were Blic (over 200,000 copies a day) and Glas javnosti, which used to print over 70,000 copies but found itself under heavy government attack along with its patron printing and publishing company, ABC, for printing a daily bulletin of the key opposition group, Alliance for Change, and both faced bankruptcy as a result of