About seven hundred thousand people watched, or at least glanced at, the recording of "Nemanja kod ćaci LIVE" on YouTube. Nemanja is Šarović, and "čaci" is collective slang for students "who want to study" and, in general, those who play citizens worried about the protests.
Televisions with a national frequency would be envious of the viewership. But for Šarović, it's normal since he cruises the streets in front of the Zrenjanin KTV camera. The fact that he was detained on Saturday (March 8) can't be bad for the audience either - six policemen barely got him into the car, and he took the microphone all the way to the station.
Saturday's video is first-class slow TV - six and a half hours of uninterrupted transmission. Sarović is arrested, the microphone is taken over by a colleague. He waits in front of the police station in Majke Jevrosime, then at the emergency center where Šarović was transferred, everywhere is crowded, chaos, interlocutors find each other spontaneously, at the end Šarović comes out and makes a statement.
However, a second life or at least a second career for Nemanja Šarović (50), after years spent in the Serbian Radical Party, is an unlikely event. An opportunity that rarely comes to anyone.
Today, they say, Šarović is greeted on the street by old and young, left and right. Even those who despise radicals admire the way in which the newly minted reporter exposes the imaginary of Aleksandar Vučić.
ON TASK
Šarović became known for going to SNS meetings, where he talks to the people. He is always smiling, confident, half asking and half commenting. And the people, usually brought by bus, remain silent, run away, cover their faces. Some simply say that they are employed in this or that public company and that they had to come.
"It is direct contact, the essence. The reason I'm going there is to paint the essence of the regime," Šarović told our newsletter "Međuvreme" at the beginning of February, after Vučić's rally in Jagodina.
Many journalism textbooks say that talking to ordinary people is the essence of journalism. But some say it's not right that simple-minded people, often penniless and not realizing they're going to be made fun of, are shown so unfiltered, live.
That fed up Dragoslav Bokan, one of the regime's propaganda champions. He taught people that when an "enemy leader" comes, they should tell him to ask Vučić or him, Bokan, about everything.
"That they pass it on to us, that we deal with those who try to plant the story that the foreign government is only a primitive people, although we don't mind that it is primitive people. But that's not true," Bokan told TV Informer.
Šarović says that he feels sorry for the people he talks to: "They are in a state of extortion and it is easiest to condemn them. We need to approach them and free them from captivity, the Stockholm syndrome. Because they, as victims, often justify the one who harms them."
He calls Zrenjanin's KTV "the only free television" and does not have a good opinion of the established media - neither the regime nor others. After his arrest, he finally made a guest appearance on N1 television.
"I knew to some extent what it would look like. They were training what to say if they were intercepted by Nemanja Šarović," he said about the events in Pionirski Park.
IT WAS NOT SOLD, AND HE COULD
Šarović did not change national attitudes. He joined the SRS as a young man, and from 2004 he also joined the Central Fatherland Administration. He was a member of parliament for several terms. He finally broke up with Vojislav Seselj in 2020. According to Šarović, first Vučić left Šešelj, and then Šešelj joined Vučić. Šarović, on the other hand, founded the "Love, faith, hope" movement, which did not have any success.
His colleague from KTV, Aleksandar Dikić, a member of the Democratic Party, says that people like Šarović's integrity and that many forgive him for his "ugly past". He came to him, says Dikić, as a mirror for the radical corps among the progressives - because of Šarović, they see what they are like.
"Many tried to compete with Vucic with political ideas and failed. People clearly differ only in terms of integrity, honesty and incorruptibility - this is in the foreground with Šarović. Even when you don't agree with him, he could have cashed in on his political talent much more profitably than Aleksandar Martinović or Nataša Jovanović, but he refused."
Dikić explains the popularity of Šarović's shows, performances and reporting ventures by the audience's habituation to reality shows in politics. "And his walk through the progressives, questioning and provoking, is a kind of reality show. Šarović reduced their gatherings to the Farm and the Cooperative. That reality TV vibe delights some of the audience."
The market of critical journalists does not know exactly how to behave towards Šarović and his unexpected popularity. Some say - he is not a journalist, but still a radical who goes among "his own", to the former electorate of radicals.
But there is no deed to journalism - a man with a microphone, in any kind of journalistic enterprise, can only be treated as a journalist. Thus, Šarović became the first well-known journalist to be detained because he refused to leave alone, and the police were apparently worried about his safety.
