21 May - This evening I went along to the 15th anniversary party of the independent news agency BETA. Nowadays, BETA is pretty well part of the media scenery, but when it was founded Serbia was a very different place. It's hard now - particularly for an outsider - to realise just how much courage it took for people in BETA and other independent outlets, such as B92, to challenge the monopoly of the state information machine.
There was a good turn-out there of Government Ministers, senior politicians, and other guests. Today, the independent media face a different challenge, from the global economic crisis and the dramatic drop in advertising revenues. We can only hope that the same courage and imagination that saw them through the 1990s will help them pull through now.
Posted at 08:31 26 May 2009 by Stephen Wordsworth | Comments[0]
- Share this with:
-
-
-
-
-