While the new owner Pedro Vargas David, new editor-in-chief Marko Stjepanović and journalist Ivana Mastilović Jasnić are located in the building where the Nova.rs editorial office is located, the editorial office published a statement opposing Stjepanović's arrival at the head of the portal.
Stjepanović should come to his new position less than 20 days before extraordinary parliamentary elections. His arrival caused dissatisfaction among journalists and employees in the Nova newsroom, who believe that a change in the head of the newsroom ahead of the election may affect their work and the portal's editorial policy.
According to an anonymous survey conducted among employees on the portal and in the Nova newspaper, 75 percent of respondents are against the arrival of Stjepanović at the head of the newsroom. The others were restrained, while none of the survey participants supported his arrival.
As "Vreme" learns, a meeting of the new management with the current leaders of this portal is underway.
The employees state that they do not want to cooperate with Stjepanović until the completion of all election processes planned by the end of the year. After that, they are ready, as they state, to discuss with him the plans for editing the portal and the direction in which he intends to lead it.
In the message sent by the employees to the public, it is stated that they consider his transfer from "Blic", which they consider a pro-regime media, to the editorial office of Nova during the pre-election campaign to be questionable.
"The transition is not accidental, nor well-intentioned"
"We believe that his transition from the pro-regime Blic to the free newsroom of Nova, in the middle of the pre-election campaign, is neither accidental nor well-intentioned," state the employees.
They express doubt that the arrival of a new editor could affect the way the newsroom will report on election day, especially on possible irregularities during voting.
"We suspect that the plan is for our journalists to 'not see' attempts to steal elections, buy votes, intimidation of citizens, violence, organized voting, bringing voters from neighboring states...", the employees' message states.
Photo: Nova.rsNova.rs employees against the new editor
Nova journalists remind us that they reported on these phenomena during previous election cycles, as well as that a large part of the current editorial staff participated in the construction of the portal since its foundation, and then the Nova newspaper.
"Almost all of us here literally built this portal from the first day, and later the Nova newspaper. We believe that we have a legitimate right to protect what we created and raised to third place in terms of readership and second in terms of trust," state employees.
Their position is that the preservation of the editorial policy is especially important in the period before the elections, when, as they point out, readers should be provided with timely and accurate information.
"We owe that primarily to our readers. We do not want to deny them the truth and the right to be timely and accurately informed," the employees say.
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