As long as the public scene is dominated by the political will of the ruling party and above all its president and focused only on its own interests, the journalistic profession will not stand a chance
In a very difficult time for journalists in Serbia, we spoke with the doyen of Serbian journalism, Zoran Sekulić, founder and editor-in-chief of the FoNet news agency, who talked about the challenges our profession is facing today.
FoNet has been founded almost three decades ago which coincides with the most difficult period in Serbia’s recent history. How do you manage to safeguard independent journalism despite all the social difficulties?
If I had known three decades ago what awaited me after I decided to establish FoNet, I probably would never have done it, and if I hadn’t done it, I would never have forgiven myself. Since I was forced to leave Tanjug at the beginning of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, due to disagreement with the editorial policy of hate speech and war propaganda, I embarked on the adventure called FoNet out of desperation, as a professional and moral must.
In any case, I live in the belief that we have managed to safeguard the image of agency journalism in Serbia, which has been exposed to indescribable professional, personal and existential risks and sacrifices. Contrary to our mental health, we kept and keep defending an independent and impartial editorial policy, rejecting all attempts of direct and indirect political influence, trade-off, blackmail, and even serious threats, including physical ones.
There have been ups and downs over the past three decades and there have been moments when FoNet hung by a thread, but the integrity of the editorial policy has never changed. We think that media freedom implies responsibility, which we have always been ready to assume. When we do something good, it’s ours, but when we make a mistake, it’s also ours. However, mistakes are never intentional or dictated by someone.
We manage the agency ourselves and no one outside FoNet gives orders on what should be done and how it should be done, just as we do not ask anyone for permission to engage in journalism in the manner prescribed by the rules and standards of the profession, craft and code of ethics. FoNet is focused on the public and answers to the public for what it does, not to the power centres.
The journalistic profession has lost trust and brought on itself the odium of the public
After all, my experience in journalism is longer than anyone else’s political experience on the public stage in Serbia. I am considered uncooperative when it comes to responding to attempts at political influence or threats, which I am more than willing to make public. That is why today we are not so much exposed to direct political influences, but we are exposed to indirect ones aimed at diminishing our visibility and being discriminated against in the already fragmented media market.
I could write a whole book about what we have been through in the past 30 years. Since its establishment, more than 700 people have passed through FoNet. Despite all the dramatic and critical years it has experienced, FoNet, as a pioneer of multimedia and multiplatform agency journalism in Serbia, developed the concept of written, photo, video service and TV production formats, sharing the destiny, trials, tribulations and risks of independent media in Serbia, both at the time when it was established and today.
How would you describe today’s situation in the media? What is the biggest problem facing Serbian journalism today?
With a combination of the most sophisticated techniques of spin production, fake news and false narratives and the tried and tested technology of pressures, threats and campaigns, the government has completely neutralized one of the key prerequisites of good and honest journalism – facts are sacred, comments are free.
The public interest is identified with the interests of political elites, and today with the interest of one man, the public sphere has almost completely been turned into a big illusion. A format of constant production of enemies and promotion of populism and demagoguery has been developed, according to which it is not important what is really happening, but what the political elites want to present as the truth.
Emotions and beliefs dominate the public scene, while facts have become irrelevant. If they contradict emotions and beliefs, facts will suffer even more. Journalists, editors and owners of the most influential media outlets, primarily tabloids and commercial broadcasters with national coverage, accepted this without hesitation and became complicit in the production of deception, causing irreparable damage to the public interest.
Why is the media so strongly polarized today both in Serbia and globally?
The media scene is polarized to the point of hatred, persecution, and even physical endangerment of all those few journalists and media outlets who dare to poke the hornet’s nest that is state authorities, both in Belgrade and in the rest of the country, where this phenomenon is even more drastic but less visible. The journalistic profession has lost trust and brought on itself the odium of the public, which no longer differentiates between real journalists and so-called ones. As my good friend, the carpenter Toza, said: “Journalists used to be prized, and now the prize is on them”. The current situation seems hopeless, and it is certainly impossible to change it in the short term. Especially since a completely new media topography is being created by corporate consolidation and media cartelization, which, along with the non-transparent pumping of huge amounts of money into media, are carried out by using loopholes in media regulation and its abuse. As far as the global media scene is concerned, things are changing dramatically and they are polarized too, but FoNet is primarily focused on working and developing in a domestic environment that is extremely unfavourable and even hostile to media freedom.
As the saying goes, “There are two sides to each story” and “Truth is somewhere in the middle” (or on the sidelines). How difficult is it to define and follow truth today and be an objective journalist?
I no longer have any illusions that laws, strategies, action plans and task forces can change anything for the better. As long as the public scene is dominated by the political will of the ruling party and especially its president, and focused on its own interests, the journalistic profession doesn’t stand a chance.
This produces and will produce incalculable consequences for the profession, and what is more important for the public interest, because citizens are deprived of comprehensive, impartial and timely information about things that decisively affect their lives and thus lead them to make wrong decisions themselves.
In such an environment, private news agencies, such as FoNet and Beta, which, with huge sacrifices and risks, survived the Milošević war era and the time of Vojislav Koštunica and Boris Tadić, as predecessors of new forms and mechanisms of the (mis)use of media, are now in Vučić’s “chokehold”.
Professional, fact-based and impartial journalism is no longer of interest to anyone
However, we will not give up on professional and moral principles, but the outcome is definitely uncertain. Especially since professional, fact-based and impartial journalism is no longer of interest to anyone, be it the actors on the public stage or the audience that has moved massively to social media.
The upcoming technological revolution in the form of artificial intelligence threatens to create a new world that will have no relation to reality. How do you see the role of AI in journalism and is it a potential threat to the profession or is it a great tool that will help journalists in their work?
I fear an era in which artificial intelligence would become dominant in our lives, including journalism. Even now, we can’t take what we read for granted, and I can’t even imagine situations in which we won’t be able to trust what we see and hear. Perhaps artificial intelligence will bring good news to journalism, but the challenge is enormous, as is my scepticism. Nevertheless, some new generations in journalism will have to deal with this, which in the future, may only be called journalism but imply completely different media content intended for a completely different audience. Fortunately, I will not be here to solve the enigma called the use of artificial intelligence in journalism. The challenges and temptations of using human intelligence in this profession were and are enough for me.
What novelties has FoNet prepared for us?
It is not yet time to talk about novelties until we complete comprehensive production, business, organizational and technological reorganization and restructuring of FoNet. We started this process in 2023, to transform FoNet into a fully digital news agency with multimedia and multiplatform news production in all forms and formats, which is intended not only for traditional media but also for the widest audience. After 30 years of FoNet and 40 years of my career in journalism, it is time for FoNet to reset itself in business, production and technology following the challenges of the times, rejuvenate, be more modern, innovative, creative, continuously self-sustaining and long-lived. I am confident that we will resist all troubles in the media and political environment and that in the foreseeable future, I will participate in the further development of FoNet from another position. As far as I am concerned, the whole story with FoNet will make sense if, even without me, it lasts through time and space, as a pledge of good and honest journalism, for the benefit of the profession and society as a whole.