Photo : Printscreen Sputnik Srbija
August 2024.
As part of the program Regional Initiative to Combat Disinformation “Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Hub: Exposing Malign Influences through Watchdog Journalism”, we present you a new monthly analyses of fake news and disinformation narratives.
We are really worried! The public service of “European” Serbia is suing Sputnik for Macron — the hero of media freedom
The official visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Serbia marked the end of August. The French president stayed in Belgrade and Novi Sad on August 29 and 30 as part of his official state visit. This is the second visit of Emmanuel Macron to Serbia in the past five years, making him the first French president to visit Serbia twice.
During the meeting with the highest state officials, the central agreement on Serbia’s purchase of 12 French fighter jets “Rafale” was finalized. The conclusion of the agreement on the procurement of Western fighter jets, for the first time in recent decades, represents a significant foreign policy signal and strategic connection with France, suggesting a greater alignment with the West in Serbia’s balancing foreign policy. During Macron’s visit, agreements were also signed to enhance cooperation in the fields of ecology, culture, economy, and energy, where the potential construction of nuclear power plants in Serbia is seen as a future major political issue.
Macron’s visit to Serbia and the effects of the agreements between official Belgrade and Paris were dominant topics in the domestic media over the past week, from various perspectives. For example, pro-government media glorified the visit of the French president, while pro-Russian media in Serbia reported more cautiously on the outcomes of the official meetings but with generally harsher criticism of Emmanuel Macron’s policy. Notably, texts on the domestic service of the Russian state Sputnik are characteristic in this regard, and Sputnik’s coverage of Macron’s visit unexpectedly became a topic at the conference of the two presidents. The portal published a sort of response in a news item titled: “We are really worried! The public service of ‘European’ Serbia is suing Sputnik for Macron — the hero of media freedom,” through which previously established anti-Western and pro-Russian narratives are evident.
The impetus for the text was a question from a journalist of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) posed to the French president about the negative campaign conducted by (pro)Russian media, such as Sputnik, regarding his visit, to which Macron suggested that Sputnik is a propaganda tool and not a free media. Sputnik‘s text condemns RTS for the question posed, which supposedly “denounces and accuses another media before a foreign statesman,” while adding (incomprehensibly) a comparison — “is it even conceivable for Sputnik at a conference… ‘chivalrously’ to ask Vučić and Putin about RTS or some French, American, or Luxembourgish media reporting on Russia?”
Furthermore, the Sputnik author dismisses the claims of a campaign against the French president’s visit, emphasizing that this media does not oppose the visit as such but wrote about “Macron’s hypocritical love for Serbs from whom he simultaneously demands to renounce themselves and their state,” with a reminder of the French-German plan for Kosovo and France’s vote for the UN Resolution on Srebrenica. A parallel was again drawn with the state owning Sputnik by claiming that “it would be good for Western and domestic ‘European’ forces to greet and enable the arrival of Russian statesmen in Belgrade today.”
Finally, Sputnik‘s news repeats numerous main points of domestic anti-Western narratives. Emmanuel Macron is labelled as an “example of modern Western media extremism and deviation,” while it is claimed that “France has completely banned all Russian media on its territory… and is mired in post-totalitarian media mire and darkness” and condemns Macron for talking about media freedoms in Serbia — according to the Sputnik author — “a country where no one is banned and where it is absolutely allowed to hear all sides, both Western and Russian, Ukrainian and Chinese, and even French.”
Through the given Sputnik news, speculative interpretations of French (and Macron’s) foreign policy toward Serbia were presented, and on the other hand, certain unfounded anti-Western claims about the attitude toward Russian media, which have no complete basis in practice, were made. The Sputnik assessment of media freedom in Serbia is also questionable, given all relevant reports from domestic and international organizations on the decline of media freedoms.
Author: Igor Mirosavljević