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Yugoslavia The Media
Throughout the postwar period, the Yugoslav press differed
from press institutions in the other Soviet Bloc countries
because it saw itself primarily as a source of information, and
only secondarily as an instrument of party control--despite the
official party view that the press should be primarily a vehicle
of political education. In the 1980s, the expression of
independent viewpoints in the Yugoslav press generally grew. In
1981 protests by the journalistic community broke a governmentenforced silence about ethnic strife in Kosovo. A new federal
press law was passed in 1985 to broaden and standardize the types
of information available to the public through the newspapers.
During that time the press consistently criticized government
political and economic policy, as well as the Federal Executive
Council and the national and regional parties. The State
Presidency received less negative comment. On the other hand,
journalists were required to join the party-controlled League of
Journalists of Yugoslavia. Expulsion from the league meant the
end of a career. Topics generally closed to objective press
discussion in the 1980s were foreign policy, revision of official
national history, religious policy, and nationalities policy. In
the politically charged period of the Fourteenth Party Congress
(January 1990), press restraint decreased noticeably, as
dissident movements, corruption, and prison conditions received
particular attention.
Besides the effect of censorship, the lack of a centralized
information system also made the flow of public information
through Yugoslavia uneven. Each Yugoslav republic had its own
press system, and the media operated as individual self-managed
enterprises. Tanjug, the national news agency, acted as the
"official source" of stories, and its coverage provided guidance
in the handling of controversial topics. Because unpopular
publications were not subsidized, the profit motive made
periodicals responsive to reader needs.
All media required the political sponsorship of national or
regional Socialist Alliances, and each system reflected the
national political position of its region. The most extreme
example of this in the late 1980s was the daily newspaper
Politika, published in Belgrade. That daily, an object of
great respect since its founding before World War I, came under
the complete control of the Milosevic government. As the main
organ of the Serbian nationalist propaganda campaign based on the
Kosovo issue, Politika engaged in sharp polemics with
Delo, the official organ of the Slovenian Socialist
Alliance of Working People, and other daily publications. By 1990
other elements of the Serbian media were also controlled by the
Milosevic faction. In general, the Yugoslav youth press was the
most troublesome to political authorities; periodicals in this
category discussed all taboo topics without being eliminated, but
they were constantly harassed by authorities. One of the most
controversial periodicals of the late 1980s was Mladina, a
Slovenian student weekly whose wide circulation spread the most
radical political ideas developed in that republic.
Data as of December 1990
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