Unchanged Matrix

More and more are the media transmitters of wishful thinking, high hopes and assignments, and less and less mediators between the reality and the public. When it comes to Kosovo, the stereotypes about nations and ethnic communities (Albanians, Slovenians, Muslims, etc.) that dominated the media in early 1990s were promptly revived. This indicates that the media space - eight years after Milosevic's ouster - has not changed the value matrix on which the Greater Serbia policy rests. Deriving from the national frustration over a defeated policy, this value matrix now turns into cynicism towards main players on the international scene that are genuinely concerned with Serbia and want to help it strike off the fetters of its past.

Dragana Matovic, journalist for the Politika daily:

"For the first time in history a column of refugees sought safety in Croatia. Just up until two days ago, it was common knowledge that columns of refugees from Croatia mostly head for Serbia. So, on Saturday, two days after the American Embassy in Belgrade was torched, 'our American Ambassador' received the order from Washington to move the threatened American women and children from Serbia to Croatia.in a convoy of forty vehicles. The types of those vehicles are not specified, though one cannot but assume they were not tractors-trailers we, the Serbs, are used to. (.) All Serbs are not savages, even Tachi admits. 'Primitive reactions we witnessed in Belgrade should not be connected with Serb people in Kosovo and Metohija,' says the man called Snake. True. They are not connected. The primitive reactions in Belgrade are only connected with the Albanian population in Kosovo and Metohija."

(Politika, February 27, 2008.)