BELGRADE, 18.10.2019. – N1 TV Program Director Jugoslav Cosic told Deutsche Welle that no one should ignore pressure on journalists in a country in which journalists have been killed.
“Serbia has a hard and frustrating history of murders of journalists, attempted murders, arson attacks on homes, pressure like that. I don’t see how anyone can allow themselves the luxury of saying that those are just incidents,” Cosic said commenting the latest incident when two masked men threw anti-N1 leaflets into the station grounds.
The leaflets said – Republic of Serbia Goodby. Welcome to Luxembourg. The “Luxembourg” argument has been increasingly used recently as a form of pressure on N1 because the station is registered in Luxembourg and its Belgrade desk was formed as a production group owned by Adria News.
Cosic said that the station has been accused of not operating in line with Serbian law which even Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said was not true in a parliamentary debate, saying that it was using what she said are loopholes in the law, adding that everywhere in the world that means that it is operating legally “but she can’t say that in public”.
Cosic recalled that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic recently stopped referring to N1 as “the American TV”… “with some kind of semi-apology and only when our reporter cautioned him. “It’s like he did not realize the kind of karma that brings us. That has not changed since the time of the Radicals (ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party or SRS which Vucic was a senior official of) – just call the media anti-Serb! That was done in the 1990s and is being done now. The incarnation is different – now we’re Luxembourg,” Cosic said.