CHARACTER ASSASSINATION KAO STRATEGIJA MEDIJSKOG IZVEŠTAVANJA U SRBIJI: SLUČAJ JK
CHARACTER ASSASSINATION AS A MEDIA REPORTING STRATEGY IN SERBIA: JK CASE

Summary/Abstract: The paper is focused on the media-constructed affair (the case of JK/Jelena Karleuša) on the cover pages of daily newspapers in Serbia as an example of media reporting based on a pre-conceived strategy of malicious and unjustified violation of a good reputation of a particular person. This form of media reporting, which is in the function of fighting with (political and ideological) opponents, was firstly recognized and articulated by Jerome Davis as a character assassination. The article analyzes 110 texts published on this topic on the cover pages of seven daily newspapers based in the Ebart Media Archive (Informer, Alo!, ‘Kurir’, ‘Blic’, ‘Večernje novosti’, ‘Danas’, and ‘Politika’), using the methodological approach of content analysis. The research starts from the assumption that the understanding of this type of media-constructed affair require to keep in focus the particular interest optics of the four different social actors (attackers, victims, the media and the public), whose interests are in the continuous overlapping and confronting interplay, through which media construct the content and the interpretive strategies of the text. On the selected sample the paper analyzes: (a) the sources from which the media obtains information that they subsequently publish, (b) the representation and value treatment of the actors, (c) the text equipment, and (d) readers’ comments.

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