18. 12. 2004

RADICALS DENOUNCE B92, TV PIROT

PIROT, December 18, 2004 – The Serbian Radical Party has described TV B92 as “a treacherous television station with TV Pirot as its branch office”. The local branch of the Radical Party in Pirot has demanded that the local station stop rebroadcasting B92 programming. If they do not, says the party, the local council, which the party dominates, will withhold financial support to the station. The statement issued by the party describes TV Pirot as a broadcaster of the collapsed DOS regime and a branch office of TV B92 “a treacherous television station of foreign intelligence services whose only aim is to destroy Serbia and its institutions”. Council President Boban Vojinovic said that the reason for the party’s position is a program which TV Pirot broadcast on alleged crimes in Srebrenica. “This program on alleged crimes in Srebrenica has gone on for four or five months. I’m not saying that there were no crimes in Srebrenica, but I have not seen a single program on Ustasha crimes against Serbian people broadcast on this television,” he said. TV Pirot journalists Vladimir Veljkovic said that the Radicals were using the language of vilification in their statements. “They use the kind of vocabulary popular in 1998 and 1999 and throw it into their statement. If they were asked to explain how B92 and TV Pirot are fascist television of the Lora model I don’t believe they would know how to answer,” he said. The Radicals say that their demand for the rebroadcasting of the Belgrade program on TV Pirot is based on the fact that B92 already covers most of the territory of Pirot with its own signal. However, says Radio Pirot editor Andjelka Mitkovic Djordjevic, there is still hope that the Pirot Municipal Council will not put more pressure on local media. “Given that the Radicals are always angry at the media, I believe that the rest of the 56 council members (the Radicals have only nine seats) will not put financial pressure on the media. It is ironic that the Pirot public is again being divided into patriots and traitors, in the same year that the town was given an OSCE award as the most tolerant municipality in Serbia.