Logos of Sputnik and RT at the studio of the parent organization RIA Novosti. Photo: Sputnik.
Reporters Without Borders has published a sensationalist report on Russian media’s work in the Balkans as part of a new project known as ‘The Propaganda Monitor,” accusing Sputnik and RT of spreading “disinformation” and demanding a crackdown by the EU. Balkan affairs expert Stevan Gajic tells Sputnik why such fearmongering doesn’t work on Serbs.
Reporters Without Borders’ (French acronym RSF) new “Propaganda Monitoring” multimedia minisite promises to “promote reliable journalism” by exposing “the many faces and tactics behind propaganda worldwide, bolstering the public’s understanding of the information space and helping them navigate it more safely.”
Russian media, including Sputnik and RT, have become the self-anointed Paris-headquartered media watchdog’s first target, with RSF rolling out a series of articles on Russian media’s ability to find evade censorship, custom-tailor content, and in Serbia’s case, transmit so-called “Kremlin propaganda in the Balkans despite EU sanctions.”
RSF wants the European Union and its members to “hold Serbia accountable for hosting Vladimir Putin’s factory of lies,” spending much of its investigation complaining about Russian media’s refusal to answer its loaded questions, whining about its successes captivating local audiences, and crying about Serbia’s receptiveness to hosting Russian outlets.
“Reporters Without Borders cannot be regarded as a reliable source because every line in this report is soaked with biased language,” Belgrade-based Balkan affairs expert and Institute of European Studies research associate Stevan Gajic told Sputnik, commenting on RSF’s report.
“The motivation” behind RSF’s demands for a crackdown comes down to its status as “a media wing of NATO, a media wing of the collective West. This is a pure Freudian projection. They are accusing others of what they are doing themselves,” Gajic stressed.
“Where were Reporters Without Borders when Radio Television of Serbia was bombed in 1999 and when 16 TV staff were murdered in cold blood?” the observer asked, referencing the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. There is no credibility from people like this who did not act when they should have,” the observer recalled.
Narratives by RSF and others about Sputnik and RT being threats that need to be silenced have a clear end goal: “to nullify any kind of information coming from the other side to hush, to silence everybody who is not playing along NATO’s narrative. And this is especially a problem for NATO and for these puppet organizations, such as journalists with Reporters Without Borders, during times of war,” Gajic said.
As for RSF claims about RT’s spreading of “Kremlin narratives” in Serbia, Gajic emphasized that “pro-Russian sentiment amongst the Serbs has nothing to with the Kremlin, and everything to do with Washington and NATO.”
“Serbs are now more militantly pro-Russian because we were in a war against NATO and actually NATO was conducting and still is conducting hybrid aggression against us. I think that this speaks volumes about the falsehood of the presumptions and of the conclusions [made by RSF, ed.]. You can see how unrealistic and completely detached these people are from the reality, and how they are not really conducting deep research to see what is going on and how come,” Gajic said.
RSF’s conclusions are patently ridiculous, the observer suggested, highlighting the absurdity of “the presumption…that if it weren’t for RT and Sputnik, everybody, I guess in the Balkans and in Serbia and amongst the Serbs especially would be thrilled with the EU and NATO and so forth.”
“The new wave of the pro-Russian sentiment in Serbia was primarily created by the West. It was created by the West systematically targeting the Serbs for the last 30 years, since the moment of the breakdown of the bipolar global system” in place during the Cold War. Serbs became “the prime target,” a “Voodoo doll” for the West to “sting the Serbs in order for the Russians to feel pain,” according to Gajic.
“They were always demonstrating on us what they would like to do with Russia,” he added. “That’s why many Serbs in the past said that all the wars we had with NATO and their proxies in the Balkans were actually just a preparation for a war that we are now seeing against Russia. That’s why I think the conclusion [of the RSF’s report, ed.] is false, because it comes from the presumption that if there were no ‘Russian propaganda,’ quote-unquote, somehow people would feel different toward NATO.”
(Sputnik)
