Being a Tabloid Should Not Exclude Professional Standards

27 September 2004

Organized by IREX, a round table discussion was held at the Media Centre in Belgrade (September 21, 2004), which was used to present the results of the survey �Tabloidization of Daily Press in Serbia�. The survey was conducted by IREX, non-profit NGO for professionalization and development of the media.

Sam Compton, the Head of IREX Office in Belgrade, Dr. Snjezana Milivojevic, the author of the study �Tabloidization of Daily Press in Serbia�, Stevan Niksic, Director of the Centre for Professionalization of Media, as well as Milan Milosevic, Ljiljana Smajlovic and Svetlana Lukic, journalists, spoke at the round-table discussion.

After the brief introductory remarks by Sam Compton, Snjezana Milivojevic, the author of the study, said that the survey included the daily press in Serbia, published between January and June 2004. The goal of the survey was to identify the differences in reporting in the �traditional� morning press (Politika and Danas Dailies) and the new generation of tabloids, KURIR and CENTAR. The study analyzed the coverage of two important subjects � the process of negotiations on the new Government of Serbia from the Parliamentary Elections of last December to March 3, 2004, and the reporting on the violence in Kosovo of March 17, and the immediate consequences of it in the following weeks.

According to Milivojevic, the daily press in Serbia was involved, over the past couple of years, by a strong process of tabloidization. Papers that cover �serious� issues, but in a �modern�, somewhat tabloid format, appeared in the late 1990�s. However, only with the appearance of the latest generation of papers like Nacional, Kurir, Internacional and Centar, we can say that we have real tabloids. Compared to their tabloid counterparts in the developed media environments, they are specific for their interest in the politics and the absence of the traditionally tabloid fields of interest � entertainment and show business.

Stevan Niksic, the Director of the Centre for Professionalization of the Media, emphasized the importance of this stady which opens a whole new field of questions. However, Nikcis said, although tabloidization is, indeed, a global process in the print media and the ongoing process in Serbia is, by no means, nothing new, we have to bear to mind that the phenomenon in Serbia has somewhat different manifestations. In his words, the tabloids in the developed countries of the West are serious papers that threat the facts as sacred, while their differences are in the subjects they cover and the ways in which they interpret those facts. The foreign tabloids are commercial papers, with huge portion of the space dedicated to advertising, which is hardly the case in Serbia. Therefore, Niksic was compelled to ask: which are the reasons to start a tabloid in Serbia, if not commercial?

Ljiljana Smajlovic, on the other hand, believes that the tabloids in Serbia carry a lot of factual information, too, so the real question would be: how to move that information into the �serious� press?

Svetlana Lukic pointed out at two serious problems. The first is contained in the question: How do the tabloids acquire certain information? How does information owned by the Ministry of the Interior or the Security and Intelligence Agency reach the tabloids? The second problems lies in the evident tabloidization of the sersious media, i.e. in the fact that the tabloids, through fabrication of false information, set the pace for the �serious� media, who often try to dig deeper through such false information.

Later, the participants in the round-table discussion joined the debate, among them Petar Ignja, Assistant to the Minister of Culture for Public Information; Hari Stajner, advisor to the Media Centre Belgrade; Nebojsa Bugarinovic, President of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia; Rade Veljanovski from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade; as well as a great number of reporters and editors from the media in the country.

One of the conclusions of the discussion is that such surveys are necessary and should be continued, for they can contribute to the true development of investigative journalism. The survey managed to open a whole list of issues, the solutions to which can be important to prevent the further tabloidization of media.