For years, RTS has adapted reality to the needs of SNS. He was closed to critics of the government, ignored student protests. After the victory of the Student List in the elections, the public service did not suddenly start to report more objectively, but to adapt to the new circumstances.
Do you remember the show "The Dossier: Sound cannon - the frequency of fear", broadcast on June 19 this year on Radio-television of Serbia and the show "Sound cannon - what did the investigation reveal", broadcast on September 14, 2026?
Both shows were hosted by Nikolina Rakić, whose resignation is now being demanded by RTS workers gathered around the "Our Protest" initiative. Both times the same interlocutors were in the studio - prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade Miodrag Marković, lawyer Dragoslav Ljubičanović and professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences Milan Petričković. Both times viewers were presented with claims of an "attempted coup by fabricating the sound cannon affair".
Three days after the first broadcast, the police raided the military analyst's apartment Aleksandar Radić, one of the first to publicly state claims that some kind of sonic weapon was used at the March 15 protest in Belgrade. Radić was detained, and his electronic devices were confiscated.
A few days later, he left Serbia, fearing for the safety of his family, because he was on television Inform followed and secretly recorded, and his minor daughter was also on the recordings.
A month later, on July 17, Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade issued a warrant for Radić for, as Tanjug reported at the time, "spreading lies about the alleged use of a sound cannon." A criminal complaint was also filed against him on suspicion of divulging secret information and subverting the constitutional order and security of the Republic of Serbia.
Do you remember the words of prosecutor Miodrag Marković from the first show?
"We will not stop here. Regardless of the fact that we have collected a body of evidence and that we have analyzed and reached the conclusions that we have presented, now the second part is going on, which is the criminal responsibility of the perpetrators of these criminal acts."
While the collected evidence and criminal liability were discussed, the editorial policy of the public service continued to give a disproportionate amount of space to the authorities, while the student protests were either not reported or were broadcast only in the second half of the daily, usually in a negative context.
The report of the Bureau of Social Research (BIRODI) on the monitoring of the television visibility of political actors, conducted from September 11 to 30 of this year, showed how much of a difference there was in the representation of political actors.
"On RTS1 it is Aleksandar Vučić had about 14 and a half hours, SNS slightly less than 2 hours, and Student list only 24 minutes. In other words, Vučić had about 35 times more time on RTS1 than Student Lista," the report states.
And then, from October 26, the day after the victory of the Student List in the extraordinary parliamentary elections, the program of Radio and Television of Serbia began to look different. News about citizen gatherings across the country appeared on the public service portal, and the students' demands also got their place in the reports. Among the topics that have now reached the news are events that RTS did not report on before.
Thus, on Tuesday, October 27, the RTS portal published a text about the gathering of citizens and students in Valjevo, who demanded the dismissal of the heads of the Police Administration in that city. She was cited as the reason for that request "police brutality" at the protests in August last year.
However, there is no news on the RTS website at all from August 14, 2025 about the events in Valjevo and the police brutality that the public service is now referring to.
This is just one example.
For years, the editorial practice of RTS was marked by the silence of events and the ignoring of political actors who were not in the regime's favor. Little time was devoted to the activities of the student movement, often only after the first twenty minutes of Dnevnik.
After the victory of the Student List in the extraordinary parliamentary elections, things changed.
However, the greater representation of topics that were previously neglected does not necessarily mean that the way in which they are reported has changed. Thus, on Wednesday, Dnevnik 2 hosted the candidate from the Student List, Nemanja Karović, whom host Vladimir Jelić, apparently out of habit, listened intently for more than ten minutes, without asking him a single question about the information he presented.
Therefore, the question remains whether RTS, as a public service for all citizens, has really changed its editorial policy, or whether it just started adapting to the new authorities even before the Parliament was constituted and the government was formed.
Even after the election, someone must report to you independently. That's why it's in October annual subscription na the digital edition of "Time" is even 2.500 dinars cheaper. Choose now!
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