*CAN THE INTERNET MAINTAIN ITS ROLE AS A "DIRECT" MEDIUM?*

Veran Matic,
President ANEM, Belgrade



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“...In December of 1996 radio was banned. Thankfully we had the Internet to overcome this decision. To bypass the censorship we sent a program out of the country via the Internet. The program was picked up as a signal via a transmitter, then sent back into our country as a different kind of wave. People who had radio access in the province outside of Belgrade printed out the news published on our B92 websites, and then distributed it to their friends. People who picked up this news via the Internet were then faxing the news back to the people in Belgrade. Since it was distributed online no one could catch them. These faxes were then copied and distributed like bulletins within the country again.

We were banned today. We were banned on the 17th of May but I don’t think that anybody in Yugoslavia knows it except those in Belgrade. The program is still being produced. It has been banned from broadcasting in Belgrade, but the newsdesk and everybody are still working normally and then sending the programs via telephone or Internet to London, uplinking them to the satellite, and then from the satellite back to Serbia where the signal is picked up by 33 radio stations throughout the country. So the program can be heard everywhere except Belgrade. We are trying to broadcast to Belgrade with radio signal as well as via Internet, and no matter how strong the jamming-attempts will be, we are still going to try.

Thanks to the Inernet we can transform different media, and since our material can be found in RealAudio and MP3 format you can also view some events in addition to reading things. Thanks to the Inernet we have turned into a real media house. So it’s obvious that we can speak a lot about the usage of the Internet because we have understood it and have been using it since 1994. During the last year it became obvious to everybody that it’s extremely important to be on the Internet, even in this country.”

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“When I am talking about the Internet I am also speaking about new technologies. What we were advocating for the last 3 or 4 years is that it’s really crucial to use sophisticated technologies in reporting on the issue of Kosovo. For example, if the reporters in Kosovo had satellite-phones and laptops the reporting would have been much better. So we could only witness what was happening by speaking to those who were leaving the country.”