Montenegro, Serbia PMs Accused of Controlling Media

Vladimir ‘Beba’ Popovic, the former information chief for the Serbian government, said on Sunday that the two premiers have controlling influence over Pink TV and tabloid Informer in their respective countries.

“Vucic here [in Serbia] has TV Pink,” Popovic told the B92 show ‘Impression of the Week’.

When asked whether TV Pink’s broadcasting in Montenegro was similarly controlled by Djukanovic, Popovic responded that it had been for the past year.

Questioned about who controlled Informer in Montenegro, Popovic said: “It is theirs, the government's. Informer in Serbia is also the government's.”

He also alleged that the Montenegrin authorities also controlled the newspaper Pobjeda.

Popovic has recently been accused by some critics of being an informal media adviser to Djukanovic and Vucic, and of being behind media attacks on their opponents.

In Sunday’s interview, he denied that he was Vucic's advisor but stressed that he had "intensive contact" with the Serbian Prime Minister since 2005.

"The last time Vucic called me was a few days ago, to ask if I could attend a meeting in regard to some of his travels to Brussels. The topic was related to these trips, and we talked about Chapter 27 [of the EU accession document] which concerns ecology in the negotiations with EU," Popovic explained.

Popovic has been in the public spotlight in Montenegro in recent days after he was accused being behind a video recording which purports to show the head of a prominent Montenegrin NGO and well-known government critic, Vanja Calovic, having sex with dogs. The video was made public by the Montenegrin edition of Informer.

Calovic has said that the video is a fake and accused Popovic of being responsible...