servisima u Srbiji

dr Jovanka Matić
on the territory of the Republic of Serbia, the autonomous province
and local self-government (item 1), respect for and representation of
basic human rights and freedoms, democratic values and institutions,
and advancing the culture of public dialog (item 2), respect for privacy,
dignity, reputation, honour and other basic human rights and freedoms
(item 3), respect and promotion of pluralism in political, religious and
other ideas and facilitation of the public’s familiarity with those ideas,
without serving the interests of individual political parties or religious
organizations, or any other individual political, economic, religious or
similar standpoint or interest (item 4); impartial coverage of political,
historical, economic, social, healthcare, cultural, educational, scientific,
environmental and other issues, enabling equal encounters of different
viewpoints (item 7), free of charge and equal representation of political
parties, coalitions, and candidates that have confirmed electoral lists for
the republic, provincial, or local elections during pre-election campaigns
(item 8), timely provision of information about current events in the world
and about scientific, cultural and other achievements of our civilization”
(item 12).
The aforementioned regulations are in accordance with the
theoretical concept of public service broadcasting as a key institution of
a modern democracy in the service of the public. This service is achieved
through two flows of activities. The first is providing the citizens with
the information about events relevant to the community in order for
the people, as informed individuals, to get involved in public debate
and other various social activities, while the second is representing the
needs, interests, concerns and opinions of citizens towards other citizens
and holders of public office. In this way the public service broadcaster
performs several important roles: it is a source of reliable and diverse
information, serves as a forum for public debate about issues of mutual
interest, and acts as a control mechanism of the performance of those
functions which citizens delegated to their chosen representatives in the
government institutions.
In order to meet the regulation concerning the possibility of “the
free formation of opinions by the viewers and listeners”, the news offer of
NEWS AND INFORMATION PROGRAMMING OF THE SERBIAN NATIONAL AND
VOJVODINA REGIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTERS (RTS AND RTV)
the PSB should be independently formed, and be based on professional
standards. In addition, it should be highly diverse both in terms of themes
covered and the news actors who represent various ideas and viewpoints.
In order for the PSB to enable the “free expression of the opinions of
viewers and listeners”, it should provide an appropriate representation of
the citizens and their associations.
The analysis is therefore focused on several aspects of the news
and information programmes: their thematic structure, the structure
of actors whose activities and opinions are covered, and the level of
professional engagement of journalists as authors of news stories.
Identification of the thematic structures of news and information
programmes should show whether there is diversity in the themes
covered. The essence of journalism is selection. The investigation of the
applied thematic selection matrices therefore is done in order to show
which topics are chosen as dominant and which social groups are closest
to the media’s list of thematic priorities. This demonstrates the “agenda
setting” function of media.
A goal of investigating the social actors whose activities and
opinions are presented is to determine how the public service broadcasters
distribute the possibility of publicity, or in other words, which social
positions are given a chance to introduce other members of society with
their activities and opinions. It is in the nature of journalistic work to give
most attention to those institutions which, by the very type of activities
they perform, possess the most information and whose activities have
the strongest effect on the majority of the population, which, by both
of these definitions, are the institutions of government. However, the
public service broadcaster, as an institution of the democratic order,
has an obligation to connect the citizens with the processes of decision
making, to stimulate them to participate in democratic processes and to
enable them to influence the decision makers and therefore to give great
attention to the representation of the citizens and their associations. The
analysis hence pays special attention to the presence of the voices of the
citizens, i.e. their chance to speak to others about themselves, their place
in the world and their view of the world.
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