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December 28, 2000 Biserka Matic Spasojevic, co-minister for information in the Serbian transitional government Tearing the walls down
Until a couple of days ago, Radio Bujanovac had been under control of SPS and JUL forces. When Mrs. Biserka Matic Spasojevic, came to Bujanovac, she reorganized the local radio station. We had a short talk with her in the Bujanovac press-center. FS: How does Radio Bujanovac function after you changed its management and editorial policy? I had to play the part of the bulldozer here, and the first thing I did when I came to Bujanovac was "liberating" the local radio station, which had been controlled by JUL and SPS. The reporters told me they had been threatened by the former editor in chief. This is a small collective, composed mostly of young people who are really enthusiastic about their job. We organized this radio in one day, and I felt really encouraged that day when they were removing the road-blocks, when I heard the reporters made a broadcast of the event over the cellular phones. After that, we sent them instructors from Radio Belgrade who came to design their program, and to give them a couple of lessons on how to do the job professionally. The government provided all the necessary equipment for Radio Bujanovac and I will be satisfied once other media start using their reports and state where they got it. I feel that could happen rather soon. The Army will rebuild their transmitter that had been torn down during the bombing, which should increase their range. The next step in their work should be broadcasting news in Albanian. This will have to wait a bit, as we did try to do that once, but we got a lot of threats from the Serbian population. We obviously did this too early, but I think that this will soon be possible to achieve. FS: The citizens of Bujanovac have complaints about the new editor in chief, saying that he, being a biologist, just isn't capable of performing his job professionally. What is your opinion on this? This man is a news-reporter. It doesn't matter is he is a biologist. There are a lot of good reporters that finished other schools, and are still talented for the job. And talent is important in this line of work. I have not personly heard that anyone is unsatisfied about the new editor, but I think that he is a temporary solution anyway, as Radio Bujanovac still has to accept a lot of new people and organize itself more efficiently. I think that they won't have much trouble in correcting their initial mistakes and do a good job. FS: The Serbian population seems to think that the Albanians do not need a program on their mother tongue as practically all Albanian houses have a satellite dish and seem less than interested in listening to the local radio. I am aware that a great part of the local Serbian population thinks that way. It is a fact that most Albanians do have satellite dishes, but if we want them to be citizens of Serbia, who they undoubtedly are, we have to take care that they are provided with media in their own language. It is of no importance weather somebody might like that or not. That is one of the conditions of living together, and there is no living together with all those Chinese and Berlin walls. These things will just have to go once and for all. Bojan Bozic
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