After social media decided to label many media organizations that supported him as “pro-government”, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić compared himself with Donald Trump and became the subject of Twitter attack. politician.
“I can’t wait for Twitter to close my account and become another Trump. As quoted by the Serbian radio and television RTS on Tuesday (August 17), Twitter began to label Serbia’s pro-government media profiles as “Media “Cooperate with the Serbian government”.
According to the newspaper “Danas”, the label is linked to Kurir tabloid, First TV, RTS, Tanjug agency, “Serbian Telegraph|”, “Politika” newspaper, Happy TV, Pink TV, tabloid “Informer” newspaper and B-92 Radio related.
Vucic also tried to fight back on Twitter because he did not label the Voice of America or the BBC as pro-government. He said that these were paid by the respective governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, and in his words, most of the media were The Serbian label is not funded by the state budget.
Twitter explained that the tags on state-affiliated accounts provide additional context on accounts controlled by certain official representatives of the government, state-affiliated media entities, and individuals closely related to these entities.
“For the purposes of this policy, state-funded media organizations with editorial independence, such as the BBC in the United Kingdom or NPR in the United States, are not defined as state-affiliated media”, Twitter says.
The independent newspaper “Danas” quoted Belgrade University professor Rade Velyanovski as saying that Twitter’s decision proved that the issue between Serbia’s political power and the media has reached a “global level”.
Velyanovski added that the Serbs are “very aware that the government has been in power for many years and uses a lot of media, including the largest and most influential media”.
“For non-Serbians, this will not go unnoticed. We shouldn’t be happy about it. It’s good for Twitter to notice that something is wrong here, but the phenomenon has become so great that Twitter It’s not good to have to react in some way, Velyanovski said.
Newsmax Adria Director Slobodan Georgiev commented that Twitter has seen what Serbs have known for a decade, namely, “These are not media, but propaganda.”
“Now the world has seen what we have been talking about for ten years, and now let these media try to prove that they have no connection with the Serbian government,” Georgiev said.
How “loyalty” works
You will not find reports of large-scale protests in Serbian pro-government media, Deutsche Welle wrote in a commentary on the media situation in the context of the Vucic protest in 2019. At that time, dozens of demonstrators stormed the Serbian radio and television station, a symbol of government control of the main media.
Tabloids loyal to the government described the protesters as “a crowd full of hatred.” According to them, the demonstrators were bought by the opposition to undermine the country’s upward development.
However, a news survey by independent media blogs revealed that in just one year, three newspapers—Informer, Srpski Telegraf, and Alo—published 730 lies on the front page.
Media blogger Vesna Radojevic (Vesna Radojevic) said that in Serbia, tabloids do not report too much about directors or celebrities. Instead, they incite hatred and target the opposition.
