For ten months there was not a single second of negative reporting on Russia and China on national frequency television in Serbia, showed the monitoring results of the Social Research Bureau (BIRODI). The United States has had the most negative television time in the observed period.
The central news programs of five national televisions were analyzed: RTS, Pink, Happy, B92 and Prva, in the period from December 1, 2020 to November 30, 2021, with the exception of July and August.
BIRODI notes that Chinese officials, including embassy representatives, were positively represented in 83.4 percent of the cases, while the rest of the time they were reported neutrally.
Russian officials are positively represented in an even higher percentage – 89.6 percent, while the rest of the time they are represented neutrally.
In the observed period, the EU was mostly represented neutrally (3/4 of the cases), every fifth second had a positive connotation, while negative reporting on the EU took 6.8 percent of the time.
The United States had the most negative time during that period. U.S. officials, including members of the U.S. embassy, showed up negatively in one-fifth of the time observed. Neutral reporting was recorded in 2/3 of cases, while positive was 1/6.
BIRODI concludes that such reporting violates the guaranteed rights of citizens to be informed objectively and impartially in Serbia, and that the “collaborator” in this is the Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (REM), which does not condemn the one-sided information./ VOA /