ANEM accuses Ana Brnabić of deliberately distorting events in Užice

The Association of Independent Electronic Media has accused Serbian parliament speaker Ana Brnabić of reshaping the account of several incidents involving journalists at an SNS gathering in Užice.

ANEM said Brnabić responded to its protest over the physical assault of Mašina journalist Marko Miletić by suggesting the organization should register as a political party. She also implied that ANEM had failed to condemn the incident in which an RTS camera operator was hit.

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Like all other leading politicians, she deliberately creates inversions.

The media organization said its statement had clearly condemned three incidents: the attack on Miletić, the assault on the RTS camera operator and a campaign targeting female journalists from RecMedia in Užice. ANEM said Brnabić appeared not to have read the statement to the end and vowed to respond to her claims with facts.

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ANEM should register in the register of political parties, since it left long ago the associations that protect and represent journalists and media.

ANEM pointed to the Interior Ministry’s account of the incidents. The ministry said police would file a criminal complaint against a man from Belgrade suspected of physically attacking and lightly injuring a TV Pink crane operator with a hammer. It separately said an RTS camera operator was injured after an unidentified person struck him in the chest with a stone, an act prosecutors classified as violent behavior at a sports event or public gathering.

The organization accused Brnabić of exaggerating those descriptions, saying a hammer became a sledgehammer, while a stone became a stone block and a blow to the chest became an alleged near-fatal attack. ANEM also said the Interior Ministry statement did not mention the filmed assault on Miletić by an intervention police officer. It linked that omission to a broader dispute over professional journalism and criticized Brnabić for not organizing the selection of new members of the RTS Programming Council, a duty ANEM said she had failed to carry out for 15 months.

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The Mongala is dying. There is clearly an unhealthy symbiosis between the Provincial Assembly and Governor Jean-Colin Makaka to the detriment of the population.