Anti-Western front: How Serbia defends Russian voices

The evil West and the “island of freedom”

 

Reporters Without Borders recently assessed that Russia Today uses its office in Belgrade to “adjust Kremlin narratives before spreading them throughout Southeast Europe”. In that analysis, created as part of their new initiative, Propaganda Monitor, RWB also called on the EU and its member states to hold Serbia accountable for playing host to “Putin’s factory of lies”. RT Balkan and Sputnik, as media that are not affected by EU sanctions in Serbia, responded with anti-Western narratives. Since the initial reactions to the RWB’s analysis, published on September 30, in Russian and Serbian media, as well as in statements by the highest state officials, the organization dedicated to protecting and promoting free and independent journalism has been portrayed as an “intelligence branch”, a “tool of the West”, and a “global gendarme that should punish all media that do not conform to the ideology of the global West”. At the same time, the European Union and the US have been accused of conducting censorship. Against such a West, as explained, stands Serbia, which, because it has not suspended the operation of Russian media like the EU, remains an “island of freedom”, an “oasis of media freedoms”, a country where one can hear “the other side”. The bearer of that freedom, as again highlighted by the state’s top officials and Russian and Serbian media, is Aleksandar Vučić – a man who “has not allowed Serbia to become part of the anti-Russian hysteria”.

 

State leadership and RT Balkan on the same side

 

RT Balkan reacted on Tuesday, October 1, with the article “Reporters Without Borders ‘exposed’ RT Balkan – or was it us?” The following day, Arnaud Gouillon, the Director of the Office for Public and Cultural Diplomacy, had made a post on the social network X, writing: “the role of a global gendarme that needs to punish all media that do not adhere to the ideology of the global West”.

“We remember that in 1999 ‘Reporters Without Borders’ refused to include in their annual report on journalists killed on the job 16 Serbian journalists and media workers who were killed in the bombing of RTS on April 23 that year. For them, Serbian journalists were a legitimate target of an air strike. I publicly condemn the work of this controversial organization and their call for media censorship in Serbia”, Gouillon wrote.

He was joined by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin. Vulin not only reacted to the Reporters Without Borders analysis but also to the fact that it was relayed by portals N1 and Nova. “Criminal Šolak and his media, together with Reporters Without Borders whom we remember as spies who spread lies about Račak, which had justified every lie and every evil done to Serbs, are attacking Aleksandar Vučić because he did not ban Russian media in Serbia. The yellow scum does not know what it means to be a free man, so they are angry because Aleksandar Vučić has not allowed Serbia to become part of the anti-Russian hysteria and to impose sanctions on a country that has never harmed us unlike those who created Šolak”, said Vulin, adding that Serbia is an “island of freedom and will remain so”.

Statements from government representatives were joined by statements from editors and journalists of Russian media in Serbia. The Editor-in-Chief of RT Balkan, Nikola Vrzić, told Novosti about how his media house “can no longer count where its work has been banned”, and that it is “about a group of people who have been tasked by Washington to enforce censorship”. Journalist and author of the show “Relativizacija”, which airs on the RT Balkan portal, Ljiljana Smajlović, stated on RTS and TV K1 that Serbia “is not only not a black hole in Europe”, but in comparison to the EU where “there is censorship”, it has become “an oasis of media freedoms”.

Serbia was also presented as an oasis of both media and political freedoms through a clip on the social network X which was posted by Arnaud Gouillon. In the video published on October 8, it is emphasized that Serbia is a country “without censorship”, “without political correctness”, where there is “free access to information from both the West and the East”.

The night before this video, on October 7, President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić commented on the criticisms from Reporters Without Borders on the show Hit Tvit on TV Pink, saying: “Wait, all our lives we’ve been taught that there must be another side – audiatur et altera pars – you must listen to everyone, hear everyone. Today, it’s so partisanly made that you’re allowed to hear only one side”.

The pro-Russian oriented opposition parliamentary group “We – The Power of the People” led by Branimir Nestorović reacted just like the government. As reported by RT Balkan, in a statement by this parliamentary group, it is stated that Reporters Without Borders are “the vanguard of EU censorship without borders” and that it is an organization that “commented on the criminal NATO bombing of RTS in 1999 and the killing of 16 people with approval”.

 

Your right to hear (only) the other side

 

Among the media where some of these Russian narratives could be heard, the most influential was RTS. The Public Broadcaster conveyed the first reaction of the Director of the Office for Public and Cultural Diplomacy, Gouillon, in its central news program on October 2.

Just a day later, on October 3, also in RTS central news, RT Balkan journalist Ljiljana Smajlović assessed Serbia was an “oasis of media freedoms”, previously reminding that Reporters Without Borders mention the anti-NATO narrative, but that “NATO bombs are completely sidelined by them”. 

In the same report, while insisting on the importance of “the other side”,  there were no interlocutors representing the other side. Professor Milica Kulić from the Faculty of Political Sciences said that “it is not quite logical that an organization called Reporters Without Borders is trying to create some boundaries for any kind of media, even those it considers propagandistic”. She also mentioned that just as she opposes the banning of media such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, or “similar ones coming from the West, which are established or funded by, therefore, the budget of the State Department”, she is also “against creating bans from the other side”.

In addition to statements from Smajlović and Kulić, the RTS segment also included a statement from the President of the Association of Journalists of Serbia, Živojin Rakočević, who said: “The world has paradoxically fallen into a pluralism of propaganda. And what is an individual to do, what is a professional to do, what is a person seeking truth to do – well, he must listen to them, but if you ban even that absurd pluralism of propaganda, what’s left”.

Anti-Western and other pro-Russian oriented positions reached other influential media. Aleksandar Vulin’s reaction was featured in the central news program on TV B92, reported by portals such as Informer, Novosti, Alo!, while Ljiljana Smajlović called Serbia an “oasis of media freedoms” also on cable television K1. Her statement under the same or similar title was relayed by Informer, Novosti, Alo!, Politika, and B92.

Statements by the Director of the Office for Public and Cultural Diplomacy, Gouillon, were carried by Sputnik, RT Balkan, but also domestic portals Informer, Novosti, Republika, Politika. The compilation that Gouillon posted on the social network X was not widely covered by the media, but those who did, did so under titles “The truth about Serbia” or “A country where you can be free and decide everything by yourself: Such a country exists and it’s called Serbia”.