How RTCG left Herceg Novi or an Essay on Ignorance

Repetition is the mother of knowledge: an illiterate decision by the RTCG Council closed down the Public Media Service's Herceg Novi correspondent. Apart from individuals and individuals from the profession, media-literate and aware citizens, no one paid much attention to this fact. On the contrary, this illiterate decision was met with silence by the Herceg Novi local authorities, the silence of politicians who were temporarily tasked with designing public policies in Herceg Novi. The silence of the apartheid - and the right moment to ask ourselves: why?

Similar rejoices in similar - as an answer to the previous question or as another proverb that, symbolically, can explain why the closure of the Herceg Novi correspondent is an ideal situation for local powerful people. Powerful in arrogance, egocentrism and intimidation, and impotent in knowledge, professional authority and moral integrity, politicians love those who do not ask questions the most: the government does not like it when journalists ask what it does not want to answer, the government does not like it when journalists remember past promises, the government does not like it when journalists know more than what is on the paper they plant. So, by closing the Herceg Novi correspondent and the subsequent dismissal of journalist Nevenka Macan, the government got what it loves most: microphones and cameras without questions, transmitters of PR information and served media content. "Herceg Novi has never been more represented on TVCG", as if their applauses were saying to each other.

However, what did we really get - as the audience of the Public Media Service, as financiers of the national public broadcaster, as citizens of Novalja, or rather - as citizens?

Closing a correspondent office is not just a transfer or relocation. It is cutting off communication between the local community and the national public, it is shutting down an important source of information outside Podgorica. It is another step towards a centralized, polished and media-sterile space in which, in the end, only what politicians want to hear is heard - preferably in the form of press releases and marketing plastic. Closing a correspondent office means that the local community no longer has "its" eyes and ears in the Public Media Service, that local problems will no longer be broadcast from Novi - but perhaps from Tivat, or from Podgorica, that information about the life of this city will come filtered, from a distance, without nuances and without context. There is no longer an unpleasant editorial staff in the field, no longer any awkward questions about unresolved communal problems, noise and dirt, about party employment, about pollution, disorder, arrogance and silence that political life here has practiced as a norm of behavior for years. Instead, they can now address the "public" through microphones that they transmit themselves - without anyone asking them "but why?", "how?" and "what does this mean for citizens?".

Another thing that politicians love: institutional and civic oblivion. And precisely because of this, let us remind you that the closure of the Herceg Novi correspondent and the dismissal of Nevenka Macan are just the latest activities within a strategy that aims to subdue all media freedoms and deliver only one "truth" - designed in political and party cabinets. The foundation for these activities was the establishment of Television Herceg Novi - without a study or strategic plan, without public debate, without respect for procedures and with great opposition from the profession, employees and trade union organizations. Radio Herceg Novi was not obedient enough and did not have an image - and egocentrics need exactly that: to be seen, to walk around in a new jacket or new shoes, to be praised by their neighbors, to show a video of a 100m asphalted road...

Finally, the question is not just where journalists from Herceg Novi will work. The question is - what will be told from Herceg Novi at all? If silence continues, the answer will be simple: nothing. And to no one. Because without a correspondent, without local journalists with a reputation, without professionals who know their city - the public service becomes just another station in the chain of centralized propaganda. In that silence - the public loses the most. And this is not a legal, but a deeply political and social mistake.

In the end, I want to believe that the media reality we find ourselves in is a consequence of ignorance, and that the correct title of this text is - An Essay on Ignorance. I would hate to have to rename it - An Essay on Rudeness and Corruption.

P.S. One of the basic functions of the media is also educational. So why not try to educate those who are at the head of these media, and by the way - at the head of our municipalities and the state? It's nice to read. I suggest you start with the book by Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Renate Salecl Passion for ignorance (Fraktura, 2022). Because, if "fear of knowledge" is one of the causes of authoritarian systems, then "passion for ignorance" is politics.

The author is a university professor and producer.