Tretman knjige u srpskim medijima (1)
Treatment of Books in Serbian Media (1)

Summary/Abstract: The years of Yugoslav dissolution, wars, convoys of refugees – majority still lives in „temporary housing”, unprecedented inflation, sanctions, bombing, penalty isolation of Serbia from the world, permanent crisis enhanced by current waves of world recession, unemployment, brain drain, lagging behind the other countries of Europe and region, devastation of value system, negative trends in employment and education, more than half of the functionally illiterate population and polarisation of media between small group of law-circulation, relatively high quality (elite?) papers and majority of relatively popular, tabloid press – all of that negatively effects general cultural level, especially the place of culture in media. Attacks on media, their privatisation, extreme commercialisation as an inevitable, temporary life belt, perishing of newspapers and magazines, severe competition in narrow media space, decrease of number of pages in print media, narrowing down the space for quality, educational programmes, for expensive investigating journalism and for programmes about culture in electronic media, unsatisfactory position and laying journalists off – they all have resulted in reduction of space and time dedicated to culture, and by the same logic, in reduction of space and time given to books. Looking at four dominant media functions (information, education, socialisation and entertainment), the educational function suffered the most, which has even worse consequences for a place in which there is no conscious about the existential minimum of cultural need. The research on treatment of books in Serbian media has been performed in 2008/2009. The results have confirmed the initial hypotheses about the suppression of culture in general and books in specific and about the disappearance of quality literary critique from contemporary media, but they also indicate the lack of awareness among owners and editors about the essential need for nourishing the cultural content in a backward environment such is this one. „People do not know what they want, until they are being offered” – said a renowned British designer Sir Joseph Konran.

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