By Nenad Radicevic

Being the poll of democracy and the openness of society, television has entered the danger zone in several European countries, wherefore professionals have been replaced with loyal mediocrities, while the quality of culture and critical journalism have been endangered by politisation and the lack of funds. Analysing the digital broadcast issues, the experts from the Open Society Institute have emphasised that media have "welcome" economic crisis financially undone and incapable to fulfil the tasks a public service is expected to do, while at the same time political elites make sure that key positions are reserved for their party colleagues, believing that in this way any consequences coming from the EU will be avoided.

By Jelena Milicevic

"Subscription - an attack on human rights," "Instead of democracy - subscription," "Stop for the tax"; "In case the RTS sues you, you should sue it, too," "Those who need the RTS, should pay," "You have to pay tax no matter whether you watch TV or not"...these are just some of the newspapers headlines published during the past three years since the subscription for the public broadcasting service has become effective. Thanks to the nonexistent database, it can only be estimated that some 50 percent of the Serbian citizens fulfil this law obligation unlike the neighbouring Croatia where the subscription chargeability is between 95 and 97 percent. Serbia`s citizens` greater awareness in establishing the fact that, in accordance with the European standards, without subscription there is no public broadcasting service, can be achieved neither by the model of subscription money collecting nor frequent criticism on quality and politicisation of the programme.

Several years ago, Radio-Television of Serbia, RTS, has become public broadcasting service. Nevertheless, professional and general public though is of the opinion that the RTS still does not fulfil all the standards already achieved in other European countries. In spite of the programme improvements, public still objects the most to the quality of the RTS programme concept stressing the lack of culture, education and science as well as quality entertaining shows. Moreover, those citizens who do not pay subscription justify this decision by the programme poor quality.

By Jelena Milicevic

Various political coalitions in Serbia have been promising depolitisation and deregulation of media, but not even statutory terms have enforced politicians to reduce their influence on print and electronic media by their privatisation. Public Information Law was adopted in 2003, according to which state authorities can be neither founders, nor owners of print media`s shares. Despite the law, government is still part-owner in two influential newspapers, Politika and Novosti, nevertheless Tanjug news agency, Radio Jugoslavija and Newsreel and News Film Company "Filmske novosti" are directly financed from the state budget.