RTS Apologized to Viewers and Pink Announced Layoffs for Around a Thousand Staff: Vučić Fell, and the Screen Changed Its Tone in a Week

For almost two years students protested across Serbia, and on the screens of RTS and Vojvodina's RTV there was barely an objective word about them. One week after Aleksandar Vučić lost the elections, the public broadcasters came out with an apology to viewers "for everything left out in the previous period."

"These are the first steps toward, we hope, the recovery of RTS... Ahead of us is work on program content, all in the public interest. We want to win back your trust," the new editorial board of RTS's news program said, in a statement read on the main evening newscast on Thursday. Nicely worded. But the trust was burned by an editorial line that for years decided who would be seen on screen and who wouldn't.

The resignations fell like dominoes. First the editor-in-chief and part of the RTV newsroom left, then the director of RTS, the editor of the news program was replaced, and there were changes in individual newsrooms too. On Friday RTV director Goran Karadžić also resigned. What exactly was "left out," and on whose orders? That's the question that follows every apology like this.

At the commercial channels it's harsher. Željko Mitrović, owner of TV Pink, whose network reaches across the region, announced layoffs for around a thousand employees. How many of those thousand tailored the propaganda, and how many just collected a salary?

On the street the tone was heavier still. Groups of angry citizens gathered outside the Informer and Pink newsrooms, and TV Informer's program was briefly interrupted when a mass of people burst into the studio. The student list immediately condemned the break-ins and called for restraint from revenge, but also demanded accountability for public speech: for years of breaking professional codes, including criminal liability for spreading hatred against political opponents. Vučić, meanwhile, calls the demands for a faster transition and for resignations in the police, intelligence, the judiciary and regime media "revolutionary terror."

Believing the network is finished would be premature. His most loyal support for now remains TV Informer and the tabloid of the same name, which even after the defeat call him both "president" and "leader of the opposition." Ana Martinoli, a professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, warns there are no quick fixes: "One apology doesn't change the system, and an election defeat doesn't erase the ownership, financial and political ties that for more than a decade determined the programming of a large number of media outlets." According to her, Vučić doesn't need every TV channel. It's enough that in part of the media space his interpretation remains the only one that seriously counts.

Brussels says the same thing in its own drier way. The European Commission's report on Serbia, due to be officially released on November 4 and whose content is already known, says the country has continued to backslide on media freedom, with intimidation of journalists and hate speech directed at them. That's the legacy waiting for the new government.

The Balkans know this scene: power changes hands, and overnight the cameras turn toward the new winners. The real test for RTS comes the first time the new government gets something wrong. Will anyone say so on the main newscast then?