03. 09. 2008

THE PUBLIC WATCHES TV AND DOES NOT BELIEVE THE PRESS

Belgrade, September 3,2008 (Glas javnosti) – The general trust of the Serbian citizens in the media is relatively low, but they rather believe in the media companies they have chosen to be their sources of information. That is the result of the survey by the “Strategic Marketing” agency.

The executive director, Svetlana Logar, stated at the press conference that 25% of Serbian citizens more-or-less believed in the media, while, on the other hand, 66% of all surveyed believed in the media companies they had chosen to be their sources of information.

- Most citizens, i.e. 57%, trust TV the most, 9% believe in the press, while only 6% have faith in the radio – said Logar, as reported by “Tanjug”.

Having stated that the survey had been performed from July 17 to 21, Logar pointed out that most citizens, i.e. 53%, believed that the media misinformed the public on purpose at least in certain circumstances.

The citizens, who believed that the independent media were the ones which reported truthful and well-established facts, thought that there were very few independent media in the Republic of Serbia (47%), while 27% of those surveyed thought that Serbia did not have any independent media. A large percentage of the population, i.e. 73%, believed that the reported information was controlled, and every fourth citizen (26%) considered that the control existed to a great extent, said she. According to the survey results, the citizens named the following as the main source of the limitation to the media freedom: political pressures of the government on the editorial policies of media companies (47%). Out of 72% of the citizens who believed that the media were controlled, 92% of them thought that the pressure stemmed from political parties and the government, said Logarov, and added that the second source of control were tycoons and the organized crime, according to those surveyed.

The results of the survey show that the public believes that the most frequently controlled information is that referring to financial malversations by politicians and tycoons.

The director of “Strategic Marketing”, Srđan Bogosavljević, claimed that the majority of the population (about 83%) believed that television stations, which were named as the most frequent source of information, were simultaneously under the strictest control.

When asked about political parties, Bogosavljević said that viewers were clearly grouped into two clans: B92 attracted the followers of the Liberal-Democratic and the Democratic parties, while the followers of the Democratic Party of Serbia, the Serbian Radical Party and the Socialist Party of Serbia preferred RTS.