Brnabic Apologizes to Reporter Milic, Repeats Accusations
After the Serbian journalists' association called a video a malicious edit of reporter Milos Milic's words, Ana Brnabic apologized, then repeated her accusations against three Student List candidates.
Ana Brnabic, deputy president of the Main Board of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and a former speaker of the National Assembly, has apologized to FoNet agency reporter Milos Milic over a video she posted to her account on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, September 18. Her reply, published in full in a letter by the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), was sent to the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) on Sunday, September 20, at 4:57 p.m., a day after UNS said the clip was a malicious video edit that misrepresented Milic’s words.
In the disputed clip, Milic questions Jova Bakic, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and a Student List candidate, during an episode of FoNet’s show “Kvaka 23” recorded roughly four months earlier. According to UNS, Milic asks in that conversation:
“I have to ask you, a moment ago you used a phrase, I wrote it down, the stupidest parts of our society, when you were talking about supporters of the Serbian Progressive Party.”
UNS says Brnabic’s edit presented that line as Milic’s own opinion, even though he was only repeating Bakic’s words and asking him to clarify them, something the association says is clear from the fact that the reporter reads from a sheet of paper in the clip. UNS called it “a dangerous attempt to discredit” the journalist and urged everyone taking part in the election campaign to respect the law and media standards. Its statement said “professional journalist Milos Milic did not make value judgments or insult anyone” and was simply asking a question in line with the rules of his profession.
In her response, which she asked to be published in full, Brnabic argued that UNS had undercut its own headline within the body of its statement, since the video is about Student List candidates, not about Milic. “Milic is not on the Student List, so it’s clear he isn’t the subject of the video,” she wrote. She apologized “if [Milic] in any way felt singled out or insulted” and said she would post longer clips going forward. “Next time I’ll make a longer video so everything is clearly heard,” she said, maintaining that Bakic calls Aleksandar Vucic’s voters “the stupidest part of society.”
In the same letter, she repeated accusations against two other Student List candidates. She claimed Sara el Sarag says SNS voters have “a different facial physiognomy,” while Ana Mirkovic, according to Brnabic, can recognize the party’s voters by their appearance. “These are the views of Student List candidates, who according to students were chosen by them, not by journalists,” she concluded.
Brnabic added that, as far as she was concerned, a three second clip was enough for UNS to issue its statement, while the association, in her telling, stays silent about Bakic’s yearslong threats against the editor in chief of one media outlet, about wanted notices posted for RTS journalists, and about physical attacks on reporters Branka Lazic, Dragana Cendic and Jelena Baranin. Neither UNS nor the three named Student List candidates had responded to those claims by the time this article was published.
The exchange comes in the middle of an election campaign in which the Student List and the ruling SNS have spent weeks accusing each other of manipulating media content. Whether UNS will respond to Brnabic’s letter, and whether Bakic, el Sarag and Mirkovic will react to her claims, remains an open question for now.
