SERBIAN PRESS BETWEEN PARTOCRACY AND CIVIC SOCIETY

Abstract

In modern media society, the change in political communication is increasingly notable due to the enforcement of agendas which create a parliamentaryrepresentative public forming dominant political will by drawing attention to itself and promoting its own interests. In transitional societies, such as Serbia nowadays, critically responsible and investigative journalism is diminished, while interpretation of facts is frequently done in accordance with the expectations of the ruling elite, PR services, well hidden lobbies, powerful advertisers, target groups and nongovernmental power centers. For the requirements of this work, the contents of eight most read daily newspapers have been analyzed (Politika, Danas, Pravda, Blic, Vecernje novosti, Kurir, Pres and Alo), with the aim of determining the subject who defines the topics in the public space, what ideas are prioritized and how much exactly is the informational and communicational system open and pluralistic. This type of attitude focuses on the sources and methods of collecting journalistic information, the existence of media forms, that is, the editing politics functions which should not be transformed into a platform for the ruling coalition. Daily print continues to create the public mind, articulates interests and opinions of governing structures, disregarding the obligation of occasionally criticizing and controlling, or enabling the auditory perception of common citizens, which would create conditions for widerange participation in politics. The tendency of political representatives to manage public space threatens to cancel pluralistic orientation as well as shatter the country as an institutionally-administrative block. The spreading of a party-like state leads to a monopoly of various privileges, so that instead of the will of the people we have the will of the elite. Media-representative democracy, which should be the goal for Serbia, implies the total separation of the press from the state, the Parliament, political parties and Arkan-like power centers, which is still not visible after ten years after the democratic changes!