Some RTS employees apologise to the public after editor-in-chief Bojana Mladenović’s statements on K1

A group of employees of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS), gathered in the group “Naš protest”, have apologised to the public for the statements of the editor-in-chief of RTS’s news programme, Bojana Mladenović, given on K1 television, as the newspaper Danas reports. In a video published on social media, they say: “We apologise to all citizens of Serbia, the owners of RTS, that this person is in such a high and important function. The employees of the Public Media Service did not choose her.”

According to Danas, in the statement that provoked the reaction, Mladenović spoke about the responsibility of public opinion researchers in relation to the upcoming elections, saying that polls “inflate someone’s wings” and give “false hope”, which on the evening of 25 October would serve as a basis for claims that “the elections were stolen, take to the streets”. The “Naš protest” group responded: “If you don’t know who will win the elections on 25 October, here is the prophecy of the editor-in-chief of RTS’s news programme” — recalling that she had just apologised after calling students a “mob” in an interview with Aleksandar Vučić.

Members of the group asked the editor-in-chief how many invitations have been sent to students in the last two years and how many to representatives of the authorities, and criticised her for the way she presented students’ participation in RTS’s programme. Mladenović complained that she sometimes feels as if she is fighting against windmills, saying that on 15 March, the day of the large rally in Slavija, 22 of the News Bulletin’s 35 minutes were devoted to the protest — while “Naš protest” asked whether a single “shirt” of the News Bulletin represents everything, calling this an “always incomplete picture and manipulation”.

There were also reactions from journalists’ associations: the vice-president of the Association of Journalists of Serbia, Slobodan Ćirić, said that RTS as a public service must serve all citizens and that “when the public service truly becomes such, there will be no need for apologies”; the chair of the board of the Press Council, Marija Obrenović, recalled that journalists must bear the Journalists’ Code in mind at every public appearance; while Jelena Jerinić from the Green-Left Front said that with these statements the editor-in-chief has become involved in the election campaign and should resign or be dismissed, Danas reports.