servisima u Srbiji

dr Jovanka Matić
defines whose activities and opinions are relevant to the public. The
dominant presence of some actors, as well as the absence of others,
creates a picture of reality which favours some interests and values more
than others. The responsibility of the public broadcaster in this regard is
to bring pluralism of voices to the audience and let the topics be discussed
from different angles, which also carry confronted opinions.
The research listed the actors appearing in the primetime
newscasts in great detail. Every subject that had a live appearance was
tracked, and in news which had no voiced speakers, all the mentioned
actors were registered as well. As one news report could have many
actors, their number was higher than the number of news items.
The total number of listed actors was 3651, of which 906 in, 711 in
Radio Belgrade’s Novosti dana, 604 in RTV’s Dnevnik, 812 in Vojvodjanski
dnevnik and 618 in radio RTV’s Novosti.
A single news item included less than two subjects on average (1,6).
A great number of news stories covered the activities and viewpoints of
just one actor (institutions, groups or individuals).
There were three dominant groups of actors whose activities
or opinions the news reports focused on: representatives of governing
bodies, representatives of political parties and foreign actors. These three
groups constituted 50% to 60% of appearances of all news actors (mostly
in RTV’s Dnevnik with 61%, and the least in Vojvodjanski dnevnik, with
51%).
Table 4: Structure of news actors (in %)
RTS:
Radio
Belgrade:
Novosti dana
RTV:
Radio
RTV:
Novosti
RTV:
Vojvodjanski
dnevnik
Dnevnik
Dnevnik
State
Institutions
20 25 19 27 23
Foreign
actors
27 20 21 26 17
Political
parties
14 11 16 6 11
Citizens 8 8 6 7 7
NEWS AND INFORMATION PROGRAMMING OF THE SERBIAN NATIONAL AND
VOJVODINA REGIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTERS (RTS AND RTV)
Sport actors 9 3 8 4 10
Economic
actors
5 6 5 6 5
Experts 3 6 3 3 2
Civil unions 3 3 4 5 4
Media actors 1 6 9 1 4
Cultural
actors
2 3 2 3 5
Educational
actors
Healthcare
actors
Religious
actors
Kosovo
actors
National
minorities
Social
protection
actors
Special
social
groups
Other
subjects
1 1 1 8 1
1 2 1 2 3
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 0
2 0 1 0 4
2 4 2 0 1
The high frequency of the appearance of political party members
in news items is the consequence of the timing of the analysis matching
the time of the election campaign, while the intense presence of
government representatives and foreign actors is a traditional feature of
domestic newscasts. Taking into account that most of the foreign actors
consisted of high ranked government officials of foreign institutions
(presidents of foreign countries, the representatives of institutions of the
EU, foreign ambassadors in Serbia, government and political leaders from
neighbouring countries, etc.), the analyzed programming was dominated
by the discourse of the political elite.
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