Post by radovic on Nov 5, 2009 13:24:33 GMT -5
Turning on the News
by Drasko Djuranovic
5 November 2009
Once allies in the push for Montenegrin independence, the country's prime minister and its oldest private newspaper are now locked in a nasty war of words and writs.
PODGORICA | It may have been the biggest libel award ever in Montenegro, but Zeljko Ivanovic seemed to take it in stride.
“The ruling didn’t surprise me,” the director of Vijesti told reporters after a Podgorica court ordered the daily and opposition leader Nebojsa Medojevic to pay 33,000 euros to a formerly state-owned steel company which Medojevic had accused of money laundering in a published commentary. “We’ve gotten accustomed to this and did not expect the court to reach a different decision.”
Indeed, Ivanovic and his peers have spent a lot of time before the bar in recent years, fighting off a rising tide of defamation claims by government officials and allied business interests. Judgments against independent media in the last three years have run into millions of euros (although actual payouts have been reduced to about 100,000 euros) in what press moguls and opposition leaders characterize as a campaign of official harassment. The Montenegro Media Institute and the World Association of Newspapers have expressed concern about the trend, as have the U.S. and German embassies in Podgorica.
But to some observers here, this is more than a simple case of government muzzling the press. For most of its first decade, Vijesti, founded in 1997 as Montenegro’s first privately owned daily, was generally supportive of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. So was its sister publication, the weekly Monitor, now another regular target of court claims. Both bolstered his campaign for separation from Serbia. But since the 2006 independence vote, they have allied themselves with the opposition and become increasingly critical of Djukanovic and his ruling Democratic Party of Socialists.
According to Darko Sukovic, co-owner of radio station Antena M and a respected figure in Montenegrin media, the struggle for political power in a young democracy is as much a part of this duel as journalistic freedom.
“This is about taking positions to be ready for open political confrontation,” Sukovic said. When Montenegro became independent, “one side wanted to keep powerful positions they gained and the other side wanted to conquer a new political space.”
That confrontation, he added, “is the most intense event on the political scene of Montenegro. It is more important and more passionate than traditional confrontation of the government and the opposition.” And, he said, it is not likely to end any time soon.
ALLIES TURNED ENEMIES
When Vijesti debuted in 1997, Djukanovic – who has served as Montenegro’s prime minister or president virtually uninterrupted for 18 years – had begun the process of distancing Montenegro from Serbia, its partner in what remained of Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars. Seeking public as well as political support for the split, the Montenegrin government supported the newly formed private media [media in general or Vijesti in particular?], hoping it would promote state policy and the independence movement.
That support was more than merely tacit, according to Djukanovic, who asserted in 2007 that he and his party had given money to Vijesti. Djukanovic did not specify an amount, but he said the assistance was important to the paper’s development, adding, “That is why I consider myself one of the founders of Vijesti.”
PM Milo Djukanovic's relationship with the Montenegrin media isn't always all smiles.
For several years the paper was generally supportive of Djukanovic, his major policies, and the independence campaign. Criticism was occasional and, compared to the blistering anti-government tirades in competing daily Dan, mild. But in the wake of the 2006 referendum on separation from Serbia, Vijesti and Monitor began siding with Movement for Change, which had reconstituted itself from a nongovernmental organization into a political party. The two publications openly backed Medojevic’s group in the country’s autumn 2006 elections.
Animosity between the papers and the government rapidly escalated, reaching boiling point when Ivanovic was brutally beaten by two men wielding baseball bats in the early-morning hours of 1 September 2007, as he returned home from Vijesti’s 10th-anniversary celebration.
The following day, Ivanovic accused the prime minister, “together with his biological and criminal family,” of orchestrating the attack. Djukanovic immediately filed a defamation claim and won a 20,000 euro damage award. (The compensation was halved on appeal. Two suspects were convicted and jailed for the beating, but Ivanovic claims they were the wrong men and were set up by the regime to take the fall.)
The trial and the mutual public accusations surrounding it amounted to a declaration of war, with both sides making maximum use of the available weapons – the courts in the government’s case, print and the airwaves for the media moguls. Both sides claim they were driven to extremes by the other, and neither side has signaled any intention to back down from the fight.
Djukanovic, who rose to power in the late 1980s as part of a group of young communists backed by Slobodan Milosevic, and his allies “do not understand that party central committees that decide what is going to be published do not exist anymore,” said Miodrag Perovic, co-owner of the media group that holds the majority stake in Vijesti, its affiliated radio and television stations, and Monitor, in a recent interview with Radio Deutsche Welle.
Casting himself as a spokesman for the private media, Perovic added, “We will need to change our society, as we did in the 1990s, and to force this regime to make one more change, but a democratic change this time.”
The prime minister, for his part, told Montenegrin State Television in September that he would continue to bring suit “whenever I am attacked without basis.”
“Some owners of some of the so-called independent media in Montenegro believe they should be exempt from the legal system of Montenegro,” he said. “I do not think that any individual should be exempt from the legal system, and anyone who abuses freedom of public speech must bear the consequences for such actions.”
STANDARDS ISSUES
Few independent observers doubt that silencing, or at least hampering, critical media plays a part in the government’s heavy-handed response. Milorad Popovic, president of the Montenegrin Society of Independent Writers, noted that among the former Yugoslav republics only Montenegrin is still ruled by a government that emerged in the communist era and survived the transition. “That government is now dominating the political scene. Being so powerful, it wants to pull all the strings, including the media,” he said.
But Popovic said the debates over free speech and free press obscure a broader political and economic context. “In the 1990s no media group could gain power, capital, or political prestige without having good relations and good cooperation with the government,” he said. With the founding of the new nation, that equation changed.
“On one side we have the government and tycoons around the government who want to preserve the status quo; on the other side we have a group of people who have financial and media power who feel they did not get the expected portion of power after the referendum,” Popovic said. “They want to change the balance of political forces, and this is what stands behind the present political rivalry, the series of articles and attacks on the government, and court sanctions as the government’s response.”
Suspicion of the independent outlets comes not only from the Montenegrin government. Croatian media attorney Vesna Alaburic, who represents the Croatian Association of Journalists and helped draft that country’s free-speech laws, agreed with the judge’s decision to hold Vijesti as well as Medojevic liable for the steel-mill accusations (although she did call the fine excessive).
And Serbia’s opposition Liberal Democratic Party accused the daily of fabricating portions of a September 2009 interview with its leader, Cedomir Jovanovic, in which he is quoted as criticizing Montenegrin authorities. “Nothing in the text, including the headline, corresponds with the basic tone and topics of the interview,” the party said in a statement. Vijesti did not publish the statement, and in several cases has refused to publish responses to its articles from Djukanovic’s party, in apparent violation of the country’s ethical code for journalists.
Popovic lamented that in Montenegro’s heated political environment, “the first victim is going to be professionalism.”
“Just as you will not find any article critical of Milo Djukanovic or other leading members of the ruling coalition in the state-owned media, you will not find independent media under the control of media tycoons ready to admit that they are instruments in a political conflict,” he said. “A very ugly and dangerous atmosphere of denunciation and classification of people in this or that group was created. … That is why there is no real or serious debate in Montenegro about some really big issues concerning the development of our society.”
by Drasko Djuranovic
5 November 2009
Once allies in the push for Montenegrin independence, the country's prime minister and its oldest private newspaper are now locked in a nasty war of words and writs.
PODGORICA | It may have been the biggest libel award ever in Montenegro, but Zeljko Ivanovic seemed to take it in stride.
“The ruling didn’t surprise me,” the director of Vijesti told reporters after a Podgorica court ordered the daily and opposition leader Nebojsa Medojevic to pay 33,000 euros to a formerly state-owned steel company which Medojevic had accused of money laundering in a published commentary. “We’ve gotten accustomed to this and did not expect the court to reach a different decision.”
Indeed, Ivanovic and his peers have spent a lot of time before the bar in recent years, fighting off a rising tide of defamation claims by government officials and allied business interests. Judgments against independent media in the last three years have run into millions of euros (although actual payouts have been reduced to about 100,000 euros) in what press moguls and opposition leaders characterize as a campaign of official harassment. The Montenegro Media Institute and the World Association of Newspapers have expressed concern about the trend, as have the U.S. and German embassies in Podgorica.
But to some observers here, this is more than a simple case of government muzzling the press. For most of its first decade, Vijesti, founded in 1997 as Montenegro’s first privately owned daily, was generally supportive of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. So was its sister publication, the weekly Monitor, now another regular target of court claims. Both bolstered his campaign for separation from Serbia. But since the 2006 independence vote, they have allied themselves with the opposition and become increasingly critical of Djukanovic and his ruling Democratic Party of Socialists.
According to Darko Sukovic, co-owner of radio station Antena M and a respected figure in Montenegrin media, the struggle for political power in a young democracy is as much a part of this duel as journalistic freedom.
“This is about taking positions to be ready for open political confrontation,” Sukovic said. When Montenegro became independent, “one side wanted to keep powerful positions they gained and the other side wanted to conquer a new political space.”
That confrontation, he added, “is the most intense event on the political scene of Montenegro. It is more important and more passionate than traditional confrontation of the government and the opposition.” And, he said, it is not likely to end any time soon.
ALLIES TURNED ENEMIES
When Vijesti debuted in 1997, Djukanovic – who has served as Montenegro’s prime minister or president virtually uninterrupted for 18 years – had begun the process of distancing Montenegro from Serbia, its partner in what remained of Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars. Seeking public as well as political support for the split, the Montenegrin government supported the newly formed private media [media in general or Vijesti in particular?], hoping it would promote state policy and the independence movement.
That support was more than merely tacit, according to Djukanovic, who asserted in 2007 that he and his party had given money to Vijesti. Djukanovic did not specify an amount, but he said the assistance was important to the paper’s development, adding, “That is why I consider myself one of the founders of Vijesti.”
PM Milo Djukanovic's relationship with the Montenegrin media isn't always all smiles.
For several years the paper was generally supportive of Djukanovic, his major policies, and the independence campaign. Criticism was occasional and, compared to the blistering anti-government tirades in competing daily Dan, mild. But in the wake of the 2006 referendum on separation from Serbia, Vijesti and Monitor began siding with Movement for Change, which had reconstituted itself from a nongovernmental organization into a political party. The two publications openly backed Medojevic’s group in the country’s autumn 2006 elections.
Animosity between the papers and the government rapidly escalated, reaching boiling point when Ivanovic was brutally beaten by two men wielding baseball bats in the early-morning hours of 1 September 2007, as he returned home from Vijesti’s 10th-anniversary celebration.
The following day, Ivanovic accused the prime minister, “together with his biological and criminal family,” of orchestrating the attack. Djukanovic immediately filed a defamation claim and won a 20,000 euro damage award. (The compensation was halved on appeal. Two suspects were convicted and jailed for the beating, but Ivanovic claims they were the wrong men and were set up by the regime to take the fall.)
The trial and the mutual public accusations surrounding it amounted to a declaration of war, with both sides making maximum use of the available weapons – the courts in the government’s case, print and the airwaves for the media moguls. Both sides claim they were driven to extremes by the other, and neither side has signaled any intention to back down from the fight.
Djukanovic, who rose to power in the late 1980s as part of a group of young communists backed by Slobodan Milosevic, and his allies “do not understand that party central committees that decide what is going to be published do not exist anymore,” said Miodrag Perovic, co-owner of the media group that holds the majority stake in Vijesti, its affiliated radio and television stations, and Monitor, in a recent interview with Radio Deutsche Welle.
Casting himself as a spokesman for the private media, Perovic added, “We will need to change our society, as we did in the 1990s, and to force this regime to make one more change, but a democratic change this time.”
The prime minister, for his part, told Montenegrin State Television in September that he would continue to bring suit “whenever I am attacked without basis.”
“Some owners of some of the so-called independent media in Montenegro believe they should be exempt from the legal system of Montenegro,” he said. “I do not think that any individual should be exempt from the legal system, and anyone who abuses freedom of public speech must bear the consequences for such actions.”
STANDARDS ISSUES
Few independent observers doubt that silencing, or at least hampering, critical media plays a part in the government’s heavy-handed response. Milorad Popovic, president of the Montenegrin Society of Independent Writers, noted that among the former Yugoslav republics only Montenegrin is still ruled by a government that emerged in the communist era and survived the transition. “That government is now dominating the political scene. Being so powerful, it wants to pull all the strings, including the media,” he said.
But Popovic said the debates over free speech and free press obscure a broader political and economic context. “In the 1990s no media group could gain power, capital, or political prestige without having good relations and good cooperation with the government,” he said. With the founding of the new nation, that equation changed.
“On one side we have the government and tycoons around the government who want to preserve the status quo; on the other side we have a group of people who have financial and media power who feel they did not get the expected portion of power after the referendum,” Popovic said. “They want to change the balance of political forces, and this is what stands behind the present political rivalry, the series of articles and attacks on the government, and court sanctions as the government’s response.”
Suspicion of the independent outlets comes not only from the Montenegrin government. Croatian media attorney Vesna Alaburic, who represents the Croatian Association of Journalists and helped draft that country’s free-speech laws, agreed with the judge’s decision to hold Vijesti as well as Medojevic liable for the steel-mill accusations (although she did call the fine excessive).
And Serbia’s opposition Liberal Democratic Party accused the daily of fabricating portions of a September 2009 interview with its leader, Cedomir Jovanovic, in which he is quoted as criticizing Montenegrin authorities. “Nothing in the text, including the headline, corresponds with the basic tone and topics of the interview,” the party said in a statement. Vijesti did not publish the statement, and in several cases has refused to publish responses to its articles from Djukanovic’s party, in apparent violation of the country’s ethical code for journalists.
Popovic lamented that in Montenegro’s heated political environment, “the first victim is going to be professionalism.”
“Just as you will not find any article critical of Milo Djukanovic or other leading members of the ruling coalition in the state-owned media, you will not find independent media under the control of media tycoons ready to admit that they are instruments in a political conflict,” he said. “A very ugly and dangerous atmosphere of denunciation and classification of people in this or that group was created. … That is why there is no real or serious debate in Montenegro about some really big issues concerning the development of our society.”