Dnevni telegraf
Encyclopedia
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
between 1996 and November 1998, and then also for a short time in Podgorica
Podgorica
Podgorica , is the capital and largest city of Montenegro.Podgorica's favourable position at the confluence of the Ribnica and Morača rivers and the meeting point of the fertile Zeta Plain and Bjelopavlići Valley has encouraged settlement...
until March 1999. It was the first privately owned daily in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
after more than 50 years of across-the-board public ownership under communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Founded and owned by Slavko Ćuruvija
Slavko Curuvija
Slavko Ćuruvija was a Serbian journalist and newspaper publisher. His brutal murder on 11 April 1999 in Belgrade, Serbia provoked international outrage and wide condemnation...
, Dnevni telegraf maintained high prominence and readership all throughout its run.
History
The newspaper benefited from its owner's personal relationship and access to Mirjana MarkovićMirjana Markovic
Mirjana "Mira" Marković is the leader of the Yugoslav Left political party and the widow and childhood friend of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević.-Personal life:...
, wife of former Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
. By being able to get relevant information from such a top source, the newspaper built up a sizeable readership, though still managing to keep an independent point of view as much as possible.
This Ćuruvija-Marković relationship was described as "a non-aggression pact rather than a friendship" by Aleksandar Tijanić
Aleksandar Tijanic
Aleksandar Tijanić , Serbian journalist and current national TV director, was born in Đakovica, FPR Yugoslavia on 13 December 1950...
(Ćuruvija's colleague and current RTS General Director) in RTS
Radio Television of Serbia
Radio Television of Serbia or Serbian Broadcasting Corporation is the public broadcaster in Serbia. It broadcasts and produces a variety of news, drama, and sports programming through radio, television and the Internet. RTS is, since July 2001, a member of the European Broadcasting Union. RTS is...
'Kad rezim strelja' commemorative documentary shown on February 1, 2006. In the same documentary, Ćuruvija's common-law wife Branka Prpa further explained that their agreement had to do with the ruling couple's request for the paper to refrain from writing about the activities of their two children - Marko and Marija. Ćuruvija was reportedly happy to grant them the wish, but only in return for relevant day-to-day political info. Tijanić also said the information from this highly informed source allowed Ćuruvija and Dnevni telegraf to put together hundreds of front pages over the years, developing a big staff and a loyal readership in the process. Prpa went on to say: "Their relationship was centered around one-on-one conversations that Slavko probably engaged in, like other journalists, hoping to provoke and maybe manipulate her into revealing more than she originally planned, but as the time went on I think they became the ones being manipulated."
Problems start
The troubles for Dnevni telegraf started in October 1998 when Serbian government led by prime minister Mirko MarjanovićMirko Marjanovic
Mirko Marjanović was a former Prime Minister of Serbia and a high-ranking official in Slobodan Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia .-Biography:Marjanović was born into a large working-class family with 7 children...
introduced a decree (uredba) outlining special measures in the wake of the threat of NATO bombing. Using the decree, on October 14, 1998 the government's Ministry of Information headed by Aleksandar Vučić
Aleksandar Vucic
Aleksandar Vučić is a Serbian politician, Deputy President of the Serbian Progressive Party. He is a former secretary-general of the Serbian Radical Party and was President of the Serbian Radical Party's city parliamentary club before joining the Serbian Progressive Party. Besides Serbian,...
decided to place a ban on publishing of Dnevni telegraf, as well as Danas
Danas
Danas, Serbian for today is a daily newspaper published in Serbia.Danas was established in mid-1997 after a group of discontented journalists from the Naša borba newspaper walked out after getting into a conflict with the paper's new private majority owner...
and Naša borba dailies.
In the case of Dnevni telegraf, the reason for this radical measure was listed to be the paper's supposed "spreading of defeatism by running subversive article titles". Following the protests and pressure by domestic NGOs and foreign governments, the ban was lifted on October 20, 1998, but only to be replaced by the infamous new Information Law that was passed on the same day.
Obviously, the "non-aggression pact" between Mira Marković
Mirjana Markovic
Mirjana "Mira" Marković is the leader of the Yugoslav Left political party and the widow and childhood friend of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević.-Personal life:...
and Slavko Curuvija was off. At a time when NATO threatened with airstrikes, the regime was becoming more radicalized by the second. The real reason for its sudden attitude shift towards independent media, at least in Curuvija's case, probably lay in the fact that both Dnevni telegraf and its sister weekly Evropljanin
Evropljanin
Evropljanin was a bi-weekly newsmagazine published in Serbia during the late 1990s. It was started in April 1998, visually modeled after the German newsmagazine Focus....
(published by the same umbrella company) reported very openly about the deteriorating situation in the Serbian southern province of Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
all throughout the summer and fall of 1998. The newspaper was also very critical of the regime's severe University law that took away this higher education institution's academic autonomy.
Ruling coalition made up of SPS
Socialist Party of Serbia
The Socialist Party of Serbia is officially a democratic socialist political party in Serbia. It is also widely recognized as a de facto Serbian nationalist party, though the party itself does not officially acknowledge this...
, SRS
Serbian Radical Party
The Serbian Radical Party is a far-right Serbian nationalist political party in Serbia, founded in 1991. Currently the second-largest party in the Serbian National Assembly, it has branches in three of the nations that currently border Serbia – all former federal republics of Yugoslavia...
and Yugoslav Left
Yugoslav Left
Yugoslav Left was a left-wing political party in Serbia and Montenegro. It was formed in 1994 as is a coalition of 23 left-wing and communist parties, led by the League of Communists - Movement for Yugoslavia . It has been led by Mirjana Marković, the wife of Slobodan Milošević...
was getting ready to pass another draconian piece of legislation - new Information Law that would give it enormous powers when it came to fining and disciplining independent media.
Following an unpleasant exchange with Mira Marković during the week when Dnevni telegraf was banned - their last ever conversation - Curuvija took Aleksandar Tijanić
Aleksandar Tijanic
Aleksandar Tijanić , Serbian journalist and current national TV director, was born in Đakovica, FPR Yugoslavia on 13 December 1950...
's suggestion (he also wrote for Evropljanin at the time), and decided to put together a strongly worded open letter to Milošević entitled 'What's Next, Slobo?' signed by both of them. It was published in Evropljanin
Evropljanin
Evropljanin was a bi-weekly newsmagazine published in Serbia during the late 1990s. It was started in April 1998, visually modeled after the German newsmagazine Focus....
issue that came out on October 19, 1998, one day before the Information Law was urgently passed in the National Assembly
National Assembly of Serbia
The National Assembly of Serbia is the unicameral parliament of Serbia. It is composed of 250 proportionally elected deputies elected in general elections by secret ballot, on 4 years term. The National Assembly elects the President of the National Assembly who presides over the sessions...
.
Regime's response was swift. The staff was served with a late-night court-summoning notice on a charge pressed by Patriotic Alliance (Patriotski savez), a phantom organization with no history of existence - an obvious attempt at disguising the fact Yugoslav Left
Yugoslav Left
Yugoslav Left was a left-wing political party in Serbia and Montenegro. It was formed in 1994 as is a coalition of 23 left-wing and communist parties, led by the League of Communists - Movement for Yugoslavia . It has been led by Mirjana Marković, the wife of Slobodan Milošević...
and Mira Marković were behind it all. After a ridiculous 1-day trial on October 23, 1998, an unprecedented 2.4 million dinar (about 350,000 Deutsch Marks) fine was levelled at Evropljanin under the new Law for "endagering constitutional order", even if the incriminating issue appeared full day before the law was passed.
After two weeks of forced hiatus, next issue of Dnevni telegraf came out on November 7, 1998, featuring Otpor
Otpor
Otpor! was a civic youth movement that existed as such from 1998 until 2003 in Serbia , employing nonviolent struggle against the regime of Slobodan Milošević as their course of action. In the course of two-year nonviolent struggle against Milosevic, Otpor spread across Serbia and attracted more...
's clenched fist logo on the front page along with the movement's ad urging peaceful resistance to authorities. Regime reacted immediately. After forcing Politika AD
Politika AD
Politika a.d. is a Serbian media corporation founded in present form in 2005, and it has continually existed in various legal forms since 1904....
to stop distributing Dnevni telegraf and Borba to revoke its printing privileges, it also pressed another private lawsuit. This time by one Bratislava Buba Morina of the "Yugoslav Women Association" (Savez zena Jugoslavije), yet another phantom organization. Ms. Morina alleged Dnevni telegraf "attempted to violently destroy the constitutional order of Yugoslavia" by running an ad that "endangered women and children of Yugoslavia". In another quickie trial on November 8, 1998, the paper was slapped with a 1.2 million dinar (US$120,000) fine. This was the final nail in its coffin as far as publishing in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
goes.
Around 10 p.m., on November 9, 1998, twenty employees of Serbian public revenue service seized the entire circulation of Dnevni telegraf which was to be distributed the next day.
Move to Podgorica
Ćuruvija decided to move the production to PodgoricaPodgorica
Podgorica , is the capital and largest city of Montenegro.Podgorica's favourable position at the confluence of the Ribnica and Morača rivers and the meeting point of the fertile Zeta Plain and Bjelopavlići Valley has encouraged settlement...
where the next issue rolled off the presses on November 17, 1998.
The problem now became transporting the paper back into Serbia every day. Since Dnevni telegraf was officially banned for failing to pay the large fines, it had to be smuggled in and sold clandestinely. Most of the run was regularly impounded, but certain amount of copies would usually make it through.
Since he was now engaged in a draining open conflict with the regime, financially strapped Ćuruvija for the first time turned to American organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy
National Endowment for Democracy
The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is a U.S. non-profit organization that was founded in 1983 to promote US-friendly democracy by providing cash grants funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress...
for funding.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/stories/belgrade041299.htm Also, through contacts, he arranged to speak before the US Senate's Helsinki committee in early December 1998.
Back home, Dnevni telegraf continued to be printed in Montenegro and smuggled into Serbia, with a constant threat of financial charges being turned into criminal ones.
On December 5, 1998, an article about a murdered surgeon Aleksandar Popović appeared in the paper, claiming the deceased criticized Minister of Health Milovan Bojić. Minister responded by pressing charges on grounds of "smeared honour and reputation" under the new information law. That resulted in another 450,000 dinar fine for the paper.
Few months later, in March, public prosecutor pressed criminal charges in Bojić case against Ćuruvija as well as two Dnevni telegraf journalists, Srđan Janković and Zoran Luković, for "disseminating false information". That lead to one more quickie trial on March 8, 1999 and a 5-month jail sentence for the trio.
In late March 1999, as it became certain NATO would soon commence its air campaign against Serbia, Ćuruvija decided he didn't want to continue publishing in such circumstances. He announced the decision at what turned out to be the last staff meeting, while also adding he hoped to see everyone back once the air strikes end. The newspaper stopped publishing on Wednesday, March 24, 1999 - the first day of the air strikes. The screaming headline on the front page of the last issue was "Sprečite rat" (Avert the war).
That would never happen, unfortunately, since on Easter Sunday April 11, 1999 in the middle of NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia
Fry
-Food and cooking:* Frying, the act of cooking food in oil or fat** Pan frying, frying food in a flat pan** Stir frying, frying food in a wok and stirring it while it cooks* Full breakfast, a traditional cooked meal, also called a fry-up or Ulster fry...
, Slavko Ćuruvija
Slavko Curuvija
Slavko Ćuruvija was a Serbian journalist and newspaper publisher. His brutal murder on 11 April 1999 in Belgrade, Serbia provoked international outrage and wide condemnation...
was murdered in a professional hit style execution.
This also marked the end of Dnevni telegraf.