et illiberalt demokrati - hofhr

42
We regularly invited Milosevic’s party officials to our program, but they
mostly avoided to come or didn’t answer our calls. Our motive was purely
professional – we did criticize the ruling party, but we wanted to give them
the opportunity to answer those critics. What did they do? They would fail
to show up in the program we had invited them to and then brand that
television station (STUDIO B) as biased, pro-opposition, pro-Western and
anti-Serb, because it never invites people from the SPS (Milosevic’s party).
That method could have certainly been part of any dictator’s manual. It
goes like this – when they invite you to some TV station you don’t hold
your grips on completely, but have to tolerate it because of the world, then
it is best not to show up. You then go to your own TV station and say that
this is a democratic government, which tolerates stations that are not
inviting members of the ruling party. If you add that it is a station funded
by foreigners, success will not be slow in coming. 46
Denne strategi kan ses som en variation af den hyppigst anvendte teknik i de
regimekontrollerede medier i kampen om at definere den sociale virkelighed –
simpelthen at ignorere den del af denne virkelighed som var uønsket. Der var med
andre ord tale om en skarp polarisering af mediebilledet, som direkte afspejlede et
politisk system baseret på formel pluralisme, men med et totalt fravær af
kommunikation på tværs af det politiske spektrum, det vil sige uden et forum for
gensidig dialog og forhandling.
På den måde eksisterede der to helt separate offentlige sfærer som hver især
fremstillede vidt forskellige udlægninger af den sociale og politiske virkelighed. Af disse
udlægninger var det naturligvis den der blev fremstillet i de regimekontrollerede
medier som var den absolut dominerende. Samtidig var produktet af de
regimekontrollerede mediers manipulation og propaganda en medie og
kommunikationskultur som af Gordan Paunovic karakteriseredes på følgende måde:
The depiction of genuine reality through professional news programs came
to be seen as subversion. True information became provocation, dialogue
was labelled a sign of weakness, attempts at conflict resolution and
compromise were tagged as cowardice, attempts to represent the interests
46 Vladimir Milic citeret i A Media Portrait of Serbia 2000.