A Patriotic Course

Faced with the economic crisis, only around 5% citizens buy the papers regularly, and a slightly higher percent read them regularly. This fact can serve to highlight the effects of the nonstop campaign oriented program aired by Radio Television Serbia (RTS), and the opposition's misapprehension that two months of program on the second channel and the ``production of a surplus of the truth,'' will make them equal partners in the election race. Thanks to television and its brainwashing which starts every evening with the prime time news hour at 7:30 p.m., it is believed that the nation's ``mental state'' has been changed fundamentally over the years, and that a lot of time will pass before any changes are effected here. By using national interests and ``patriotic phrases'' as a smoke screen, television has systematically opened the doors to vast quantities of primitive nonsense, so that with time, the people have become inured to scenes of death and violence. This drug is served every evening in the guise of a medicine for all ills, with the result that millions of people in Serbia are more inclined to believe in a mediated ``reality'' served to them daily, than in what they can see with their own eyes. For the time being this magic has not been broken by queues, social apathy, a society riddled with crime, a humiliating and humdrum existence and least of all by a weak and unconvincing opposition.

According to long established criteria, the first half of the news hour is devoted to Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) protocol. A few days ago, one of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's most ardent critics, RTS editor Dusan Cukic became news. As head of a delegation of Yugoslav journalists, he told Yugoslav President Zoran Lilic how much the journalists' association had done in breaking through the media blockade and in ``spreading the truth about Serbia.'' The organization headed by Cukic is not supported by at least half the journalists in Yugoslavia, but its activities can serve as news items. The ordinary viewer was treated to a picture of Lilic saying that world journalism had suffered a defeat here and that the ``truth would win,'' or rather, that it was winning. Several days later Cukic and Lilic continued their talks in Pristina. On this occasion Lilic repeated what he had said earlier, while Cukic spoke of ``journalists and editorial staffs which had sold out.'' He went on to give ``concrete facts,'' saying how many thousands of Deutsche Marks some independent media had allegedly asked for from international organizations in order to blacken Yugoslavia which he represented so successfully at international meetings. It was reported later from Pristina that the participants of the Association of Journalists of Yugoslavia Convention headed by Cukic had not paid the bill for their dinner at the Grand Hotel, even though the sum in question was less than 2,000 DM.

A few days later Cukic said that ``he got goose pimples just thinking of treacherous journalists.'' A special group interview with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic set up in honor of Tanjug news agency's 50th anniversary, was attended by at least 56 Cukic cloneseditorsinchief of the most influential media. This was an announcement that the nonstop campaign was gaining in intensity and that the ruling party was introducing some new elements in its approach to public relations. Surrounded and protected by a cordon of yes men (with honorable exceptions) in this surprise TV appearance which allegedly has nothing to do with the campaign, Milosevic was given the opportunity of repeating ad nauseam that sanctions were to blame for everything, that Serbia's national interests were above everything, and of unofficially promoting the new SPS slogan that: ``Serbia will not slave for anyone.'' It was an evening in which the majority of the participants of the group interview insisted on asking inane questions. Milosevic spent two hours parrying a lot of empty air. In the end, he got carried away and advised party leaders not to waste money on TV spots, since they wouldn't have much effect. It was an evening which showed up all the misery and sterility of socalled patriotic journalism which (with honorable exceptions again) in its two hours with the Serbian President didn't manage to budge him from conspiracies in the Vatican and the municipal transport company. A sample of the questions asked: ``What do you think of journalists?,'' ``What would you like us to ask you?'' Even the dean of this particular school of journalism Zivorad Minovic (Director of the ``Politika'' Publishing House, which includes radio and TV stations) thought that the whole affair was too insipid and didn't wish to ask anything of the President to whom he had dedicated songs on the front page of the paper whose editor he had once been.

In the previous campaigns, the authorities had reserved the most important part of the job for journalists, people well versed in how to destroy and demonize political opponents. The two hour interview with Milosevic was conducted with tested journalist cadres. Their common characteristic is that they belong to the vaseline school of journalism, and had adopted a ``patriotic course'' when this became the thing to do. The majority are mediocre and have built their careers without typewriters, usually by holding editorial posts.

In the cadre sense, they are the personification of Milosevic's policy. Some of these Cukics have an additional quality they still refuse to believe that former Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev is dead, and hope that the material used in building the Berlin Wall has been saved, and that some day a skilled builder will be found to patch things up again.