Since Serbia’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power, it has tightened its grip on the media. With an election expected soon, experts fear that authorities will try to eliminate the last pockets of independent reporting.
“Backsliding,” “pressure,” “political influence over editorial policy” — this is how numerous international reports describe the state of the media in Serbia. Year after year, the international diagnosis of the health of Serbia’s media landscape remains the same: while the space for professional independent media is shrinking, the government’s propaganda tools are becoming more developed and sophisticated.
Journalist and media analyst Nedim Sejdinovic told DW: “The main goal of the SNS after coming to power in 2012 was to place the entire media landscape under firm control. And they did this very systematically.” The model, he says, was simple: media outlets willing to cooperate with the authorities received financial and institutional support, while those that refused faced economic and political isolation.
One of the first steps was the takeover of the provincial public broadcaster in Vojvodina, where the entire management, along with editors and presenters of news programs, was replaced after the SNS came to power in the region. “But one of the most important elements of this media engineering was the purchase of media outlets, especially at the local level, by people who are part of the ruling elite, such as the family of minister Bratislav Gasic, or tycoons like Radojica Milosavljevic,” said Sejdinovic. “The result is that around 90% of media outlets are directly or indirectly linked to Aleksandar Vucic’s regime,” he added.
Sejdinovic says that these media are sustained by public money, which is provided through several parallel channels. The first channel is project co-financing, where public funds are allocated to media outlets through competitive calls to support media content that serves the public interest. According to analyses by BIRN and the Center for Sustainable Communities, around €120 million ($140 million) has been spent on this at the local, regional and state level over the past decade, with the majority going to media outlets that openly support the government. The second, much larger and less transparent channel is state advertising, which analyses show is also largely directed toward the same pro-government outlets. A third form of pressure comes from the market. “An atmosphere has been created in which even large private companies avoid advertising in independent media, so as not to damage their relationship with the authorities, and in a deregulated political and economic environment, that is necessary for doing business,” said Sejdinovic.
In such a system, the line between journalism and propaganda is almost erased. Critical voices are delegitimized and demonized, while scandals are reported without context and framed solely through the lens of government officials. At the same time, the public space is saturated with the presence of President Vucic. His addresses are often broadcast live, interrupting regular TV and radio programs, while party rallies are aired simultaneously across national, regional and local TV stations. Viewers switching channels often encounter the same content: the same face, the same message.
The scale of control was also visible during the 2017 presidential campaign, when almost all daily newspapers carried front-page advertisements for then-Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic — an unprecedented development in Serbia’s modern political history. The opposition rarely features in regular reporting, and dissenting voices are frequently labeled as “traitors,” “foreign mercenaries” or “enemies of the state.”
Sejdinovic says that as the political crisis deepens, particularly following waves of protests over the past 18 months, control over the media is entering a new phase. “SNS loyalists are now being replaced with super-loyalists,” he explains. Some pro-government media, he notes, previously limited themselves to positive coverage of the government and ignoring critical voices, but that was obviously not enough. “Now the goal is to turn all media into a kind of primitive political weapon that will spread the most blatant lies, defame people, use crude language and create an atmosphere of deep political divisions in society,” he told DW.
This trend is also reflected in the rapid emergence of new media outlets. The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) in Serbia has noted the registration of 78 new outlets since the beginning of 2026 alone. “This is an expansion of the media machinery for spreading government propaganda,” said Bojan Cvejic of ANEM. “Their texts are unsigned and almost identical, making them more like pamphlets than journalistic content, used for campaigns against critics,” he told DW.
According to the latest World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, Serbia has dropped to 104th place and is now classified among countries with a “difficult situation” for media freedom. The report highlights that despite some previous fluctuations in ranking, the overall environment for journalists in Serbia continues to deteriorate, marked by increasing political pressure, limited media pluralism and worsening conditions for independent reporting.
President Vucic is expected to call a parliamentary election soon, with many speculating that a poll could be held sometime between June and the end of the year. Sejdinovic warns that the situation could deteriorate further, with the next phase potentially involving stronger pressure on the digital sphere, following patterns observed in other authoritarian systems. “The problem of media freedom in Serbia is a political problem,” concludes Sejdinovic. “It is difficult to resolve without a change of government, because this government, by its very nature, is essentially an opponent of professional journalism.”
Source: www.dw.com