Brent Sadler, Jago or Jado

Usually people give in in life and show that weakness is another name for being human, long before adulthood, not to mention old age. Retired CNN journalist Brent Sadler, a war reporter from numerous world execution sites, someone who knew how to put his head and camera where others wouldn't put his foot, is the first of those I know who gave in to force and injustice in the last quarter of their lives.

At the age of 77, after decades of a successful and great career as a journalist, old Sadler decided to annihilate young Brent, and with the seal of a coward and an executioner, one day appear before the Lord. As a wretch and not as a dragon, old Montenegrins would say. Or rather, like Iago, according to Shakespeare, Sadler is still British. Oscar's, not Othello's, non-commissioned officer. Truly cruel and suicidal - from a knight of the pen, or rather of the camera, Brent decided to be reduced to an ordinary ensign. As a real and not a literary character, much less perfidious than Shakespeare's Iago. Thanks to the fact that Oscar is much less naive than Othello. So that at the end of this life drama, it may happen that the great master of manipulation Oscar actually forces Iago to kill himself, and not him. As in Shakespeare.

Although it sounds incredible, Sadler decided to do the dirtiest job for the needs of some Balkan autocrat and dismiss Igor Božić, a colleague who had learned the secrets of television reporting, among others, and on the example of the former, young Brent. Oskar didn't have enough 50 television stations and as many portals and newspapers, he didn't have enough cable, satellite, refrigerator and pantry, so he called on Sadler to help him bring in a few independent ones, which Oskar had not managed to break, buy and ride.

How ironic it seems to me today that conversation over lunch we had, “At Zorka’s”, in Reževići, in the summer of 2021, a month after Šolak and I reached an agreement on a partnership in Vijesti. In the presence of his wife and a mutual friend, for more than three hours, Brent convinced me that I had made a fatal mistake and that “Šolak’s octopus” would quickly swallow me. On the one hand, he, on the other hand, another of Oskar’s poodles, a certain Milan Knežević, whom the Brents had never heard of in Britain - both of them, for different reasons, scared me with stories that Šolak would take over Vijesti, and that they would succeed in what Milo and Oskar had failed to do for decades. But, after more than four years, it is now clear - none of that.

Fate played a trick on Sadler, turning the defender of the independent profession and the media into a cog in the machine of Oskar's sinister octopus. The fabulist from Režević turned out to be Baron Munchausen himself, who falsely presented himself as the caring father of media freedom, but in reality was their enemy. He was just waiting for the opportunity to show it. And now here he is, as some Marić or Grčić, Vučićević or Mitrović, in the inner cabinet of death, who rides and regulates the media in Serbia for Oskar's needs. Šolak, once personally suspected by Sadler and presented as a media oppressor, turned out to be a knight of independent reporting in comparison to Brent. The irony is, therefore, that after almost five years since the lunch in Reževići, instead of Šolak's octopus, Oskar's, mafia-like, appears, and in a formal and technical sense through Petty Officer Jad. Not Jag. Some Sadler in any case.

What's worse, Brent is enjoying his new assignment. Much more, it seems, than when he was reporting for CNN from the Middle East or Africa. With incredible passion, mean, cowardly, hypocritical, so much so that I wonder if Sadler should be pitied at all, because if the man we've been watching for the past almost a year is the real one - then he deserves contempt, not pity. It turns out that he worked for CNN for a salary, and for Oskar he works for his soul. For which, of course, a dollar or a dinar will come, it can be a fist or a sack, it doesn't matter. Give a man even symbolic power and you'll see what kind of man he is. That is, how bad he is.

From the aforementioned irony with Šolak, where he presented himself as a victim and him as a media predator, to now it turns out the other way around - there is an even greater irony. Oscar's Jado and not Shakespeare's Iago, less than a year ago, wrote about the current master in The Guardian better than the dismissed Igor Božić. Or even the strangled Sloba Georgijev. So, objectively and professionally, Brent Sadler, a contributor to the famous British daily from Belgrade, informs the world public in May 2025 that Oscar's regime is steeped in corruption, that the judiciary is captured, and the media and NGOs are under constant pressure and persecution. With a brilliant conclusion: "In this environment, protests are no longer just about specific grievances - they represent a desperate call for a future free from the grip of autocrats and their cronies".

Or translated into our language, Sadler concluded: In this environment, protests are no longer just the result of individual injustices - they represent a desperate cry for a future free from the grip of autocrats and their cronies.

An epochal irony, from the critic of the autocrat and mafia boss Oskar, to his sidekick. What a moral decline! And the question: how will Sadler live with that shame tomorrow?! What will he do when Oskar is arrested or just jump off a building on Andrić's wreath. Although 19 minutes before his suicide he wrote to his brother that victory has no alternative. And to Knežević and Mandić to protect the Republika Srpska 2.0 for him.

I imagine Brent one day, in a new and democratic Serbia, walking along the Belgrade quay as a pensioner, and how students and progressive youth approach him, stop him and ask how he went from being a critic of the autocrat and his cronies to becoming Oscar's non-commissioned officer. Jado, not Jago. How, man, did you accept in your old age to be a broom in the hands of a falling autocrat?, will ask Sadler the youth who will recognize him on the street. I guess it would be much more like his career if Brent raised his voice against the brutal propaganda that his boss Oskar has been controlling for decades and abusing every day! And if he wrote about it for the Guardian, BBC, CNN, NYT or WSJ. How in the Balkans there is a madman and an autocrat who has surpassed all those seen before and who, in the twilight phase of his long and corrupt rule, is trying to crush and subjugate a few independent media outlets.

I know it's not easy for Brent, but I chose it. The story he tells his colleagues from N1 and Nova that he is coming to them to strengthen their independence is just as convincing as when his boss Oskar convinces the Serbs to lead them into the EU, and not into the jaws of Putin's monster alliance of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan. After all, I see poor Sadler, without a warrant or a court ruling, voluntarily sitting under house arrest in his apartment in Belgrade and watching the independent and Božić's N1, reading Jovićević's portal Nova and anxiously awaiting the commentary on the day of Obućina, while they analyze his performance and contribution to the defense of Oskar and his bloody regime. Who humiliated and divided Serbia, but also the region, more than any sick and power-hungry person in history. Maybe then Jado will register as a cooperating witness and thus save himself from prison.