THE PRINT MEDIA SCENE IN YUGOSLAVIA
‘Till ’89, people had money. Salaries wee high and you didn’t have to work much to get cash. Loosing your job was the only big problem for people, since one could stay unemployed for a decade ‘till finding a new. But, this problem was often inapplicable to artists and journalists, cause the nature of their jobs was a very unstable one.
Then, journalists could afford to say no to a lot of stuff. It took courage, though. Most people were still afraid of the arrests and persecutions that had not stopped in Yugoslavia even today. Resulting, few journalists dared ‘bark’ much ‘till they got to be known and respected. The same went for many artists. A journalist would usually work with unimportant subjects for a while and then start to loosen his (it was usually his) pen about the more delicate social issues. The government never did manage to create a good strategy for stopping this, as a wish for subversion was rooted deeply into the mentalities. They reacted with purges. Every couple of years or less, they would replace the editors of the most liberal and informative media and bring in stricter ones. Then, they combined sacking, physical and police intimidation to suppress the insubordinate. It worked for a short time, cause most people just felt when it was time for them to shut up for a while. If they survived the purge, they would be waggling their subversive tongues again in a few months or a year. Another problem of this policy was that the insubordinate were usually the best ones, so another newsdesk would except some of them as soon as the political dust had laid down. Many were still pushed out of journalism or, more often withdrew themselves, but the number of such wasn’t enough. Spontaneous, self-organized resistance to censorship was everywhere. The more liberal you were, the more people would buy and read your work. Hence, the subversives grew strong again between each series of state-attacks. After dictator Tito died in ’80, things slowly started changing. The grassroots resistance to censorship was growing throughout the ‘80s. The lack of financial perspective for young people and the massive export of the educated were taking a toll on people’s obedience. The Belgrade musical scene had become openly subversive in the ‘80s, with a series of political protest songs. Alternatives were popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after the rain. The repression had not stopped. Hundreds were arrested and tried, but that just didn’t put a stop on it. People wouldn’t wait for the freedom of expression to be given. They were taking it. The more it went, the more people were realizing how unbearable the situation was before. The rulers were trying to counter this with indirect support to aggressive nationalist movements, whose natural opposition to the human rights movement was more than welcomed. In the mid-80s, they had offered a new deal. The media people could become nationalists and get extra money and social positions, or they could just be silent and retain what they had. The deal was excellent. Journalists and writers were simply rushing to join the new movement for the rebirth of national consciousness. Their vigor was the same one with which they had promoted “brotherhood and unity” a couple years ago. Many, who were deemed nationalist before, were now off to collect the score in hard currency and social power. This didn’t make a lot of them less subversive. They were simply used to getting the money/positions through publicly supporting the official ideology. Still, the repression wave that had continued from ’84 onwards was slowly taking a toll on the progressive forces within the state-controlled media. Now, until ’89, all media were controlable by the state, although insubordination of those who should have been the carriers of repression was a constant problem at least since the ‘60s. However, in ’89/90, following mass strikes, demonstrations, and public (although illegal) organizing of opposition parties and NGO’s, there came the first wave of privatisations. Many media organizations had managed to buy themselves of from the state, so they were now employee-owned; a situation in which they were most difficult to control. Also in ’89/90, the first privately owned media were founded. The state no longer had a total monopoly on media ownership. The sense of freedom was about and many were thrilled and were writing things they never could have before. But the repression had not stopped and the state could still censor anything it didn’t like and the money, the thing that truly controls the media, was still held almost entirely by the state. If you were not being quiet enough about what they thought was not for publishing, they would simply close you down. Also, any buisinessman that didn’t bribe the state sufficiently would be put out of buisiness by frequent visits of financial police. The only ones that could survive in such a situation were the mafia, which used those buisnesses as cover-ups for bigger things, and the emigration, loaded with cash. If a buisinessman tried to finance media that would actually promote ideas opposed to the official ideology, he was considered disloyal and put out of buisiness. If a newsdesk was too liberal with it’s writing, they would unofficially forbid the state owned companies to pay for commercials there. If a company did that anyway, it’s director would be replaced within the week. So, people were allowed the free speech, but freedom was bought and the state made sure that only the right people had the money. When I say state, I mean the ruling elite. Those things are equal in Yugoslavia.
Now, you could get funding from the state, the mafia or the emigration buisinessmen that were flocking back to the fatherland, following the scent of profit. Together with incoming private capital went the empoverishment of 95% of the population. The banks would simply refuse to give people back their savings and pyramidal banking schemes had drawn the little money people had at homes into the system. After 1993, a once almost rich nation was economically devastated. As of '92, many journalists were ready to write anything for money. The state-media editorial policies went from bad to worse. The ‘independent’ didn’t go that far, but were quickly selling out freedom of criticism for the freedom of buying food. Let’s get back to the power=money centers.
A new force was slowly establishing itself – the foreign foundations. In 1991, the Soros fund had officially opened a Yugoslav branch and others were jumping in – USAID, Medianhilfe, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung… They were bringing huge amounts of money into the country. Although this was anti-constitutional and could have been stopped by the state any time, it went through the bank accounts. The foundations would transfer big amounts of money from foreign accounts. The money was exchanged by the official rate, which provides a partial excuse for why the government had let it in, but, if that money had been intended for people who could truly endanger it, stopping it wouldn’t have been a problem.
Now, the basic things that couldn’t be criticized in anything with a decent circulation were capitalism as a system and the preposition that everyone in Yugoslavia has the ‘social state’ of the European Community as a desirable role model. It was also unthinkable that someone could mention the fact that Milosevic’s rise to power in ‘87-88 was successful only because he had full, although not direct, support from the IMF and the USA. How could he be their ally, after all, when the entire world, led by Masons, Vatican, USA, CIA, ex-nazis… was in a conspiracy against the Serbian people. Now, the general thing about that conspiracy was that it was allowed to write that the conspiracy theory was false, but it was not allowed to criticize the premise that Milosevic was opposed to the US/CIA, although they were keeping him in power. Also, any notion of publishing that the elites were breaking up the country in a CIA supported common effort was limited to fanzines and, even there, the CIA role was often kept silent. After all, it was socially invisible, unlike the war-pushing policies of the state governments. If you have managed to agree to all of the following, but still wanted to criticize the social order in a direct way, and give space to political “opposition” and non-state unions, any initiative for local funding would have been economically choked from the start, unless you supported nationalism. The thing with nationalism was that it suited the mafia, because they saw the plunder they would get from the ethnic wars, so they supported the ideology that leads to them. The emigration buisinessmen and US-based foundations didn’t mind nationalism much, if it wasn’t openly aggressive (bad media coverage in the US). After all, most of the Serbian buisinesses abroad were owned by former chetniks (royalist paramilitary in WWII Yugoslavia. They grew out of the anti-German uprising, but quickly joined the Nazis to crush the partisans. After the war, they were accepted as immigrants and financially supported by the US). They were aggressive nationalists in their days and didn’t mind funding people like Seselj and Draskovic, with equivalent media. So, it was allowed to oppose nationalism, but then, there was a high improbability of getting money, unless… That’s where the foreign foundations come in. I don’t have information about how much money they gave to “free media” in the first half of the 90s, but it was obviously a lot more than they would admit. Now, if you are funded by someone, this carries certain obligations. For one, you have to advertise them as great humanists, which is pretty difficult to do in the case of centralized corporations like Soros. Also, if you xcept US money, that means that you occasionally have to publish how Yugoslavia needs a president like Clinton or a prime minister like Tony Blair. Still, it was the best option available. In the early ‘90s, the state was greatly dissatisfied with the mere existence of employee-owned companies, regardless of their economic marginality. They especially feared the potential for the creation of independent media. Inspite of economic marginality, employee-owned newsdesks had the influence. The Borba daily and the Studio B television were the biggest thorns of that kind. To remove such thorns, their privatisations were canceled in 1994 and the police stormed the factories and newsdesks; taking over what many people had given most of their savings for. The money was not refunded.
Now, working for privately owned media was not usually a big problem in terms of the owner interfering with the editorial policy, and for the simple reason that no one would tolerate something of the sort. Journalists would just leave and find someone else to fund their publishing. The private owners didn’t have much of a say. Anyway, the ones really funding the media were the foreign foundations.
In the second half of the ‘90s, the only way of maintaining media that criticize the social order in any form was for it to be funded by them. They too didn’t mind “patriotic nationalism” much, so they funded all sorts of stuff. The independent media scene that had created a basis for the ‘96/97 protests was almost entirely dependent on them. The biggest one is the Fund for an Open Society – Yugoslavia (Soros). According to their official report for ’97, Yugoslavia was the foundation’s second biggest investment with almost 17M dollars. Some 10M were spent on media. In fact, Soros, Medianhilfe, USAID and a few others practically had a firm control over all influential media that were not linked to the government. It was a simple duality, with strong antagonisms on both sides. You can either do work for one power center or the other. The third option is to be very poor and sometimes hungry. The funniest thing was that the Soros people and the government people were actually in pretty good relations with each other, which was known only by the chosen. Who could have published that?
The ban on criticism on US policy by “independent media” was not lifted even throughout the bombing. The thing was they were supposed to create an illusion of criticism by aggressive and occasionally insulting attacks and simply withold any information that wasn’t already public knowledge.
Mihajlo Acimovic
