{"id":11142,"date":"2025-05-15T09:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T08:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/?p=11142"},"modified":"2025-05-16T10:04:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T09:04:25","slug":"a-week-in-alo-each-day-someone-new-accused-of-supporting-the-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/a-week-in-alo-each-day-someone-new-accused-of-supporting-the-students\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week in Alo: Each Day, Someone New Accused of Supporting the Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Original article<\/em><\/a> (in Serbian) was published on 14\/5\/2025; Author: Marija Vu\u010di\u0107, Milica Ljubi\u010di\u0107<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Over the past seven days, Alo\u2019s journalists have continuously linked various individuals and organizations to the students participating in the blockade. We analyzed the past week on the web portal and in the print edition of this tabloid and observed a parade of \u201cvillains\u201d. The goal, as always with tabloid reporting, is to discredit the student movement by any means necessary and to convince readers, without any evidence, that it is dishonorable, violent, and driven or supported by various centers of power. Here\u2019s who was targeted today and in previous days.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday, May 14<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Croats – those who hate us the most<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who picked up today\u2019s issue<\/a> of Alo could read that \u201cCroatia is the biggest sponsor of the protesters\u201d. According to the tabloid, these are the people who hate us the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do they prove that Croats are actively working to boost protests in Serbia? They don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They claim that a Croatian flag appeared among the crowd of citizens in Brussels who welcomed the students at the end of their relay marathon. That alone was enough to accuse Croatia of using students as \u201ccontractors for plans to destroy our country\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the students themselves, as seen in footage from the marathon, carried Serbian flags and symbols of their universities, while they were greeted in Brussels by numerous people,  including members of the diaspora, carrying various other flags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday, May 13<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The region united against Serbia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s main alleged backer of the protests was Croatia, but the day before, it was the entire region<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This conclusion was drawn by following the Instagram account of Croatian singer Severina, who shared a video of the students being welcomed in Brussels. Among the crowd in the video, the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina was also visible – something Alo finds unforgivable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Monday, May 12<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alo\u2019s brain teaser<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine any protest in Serbia happening without the tabloids linking it to Albin Kurti. That\u2019s exactly what happened on Monday, when they reported that the Kosovan Prime Minister had taken the lead of the protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alo once again managed to combine the uncombinable through some truly incredible mental acrobatics. A few days ago, Kurti criticized<\/a> Vucic\u2019s visit to Moscow and called on Brussels to create a plan for the accession of six Western Balkan countries into the EU and NATO, but without Serbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tabloid didn\u2019t like that, so it linked Kurti and the students running the relay marathon using a single keyword – Brussels – and thus accused them of coordinated action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sunday, May 11<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boris Bratina: Protests are a mix of everything<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday, the newly appointed Minister of Information, Boris Bratina, joined Alo\u2019s effort to discredit student demands. The minister stated that the \u201cuprising in Serbia is not a student movement\u201d, but rather the result of various actors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe simply have students who are different. Then you have teachers, for example. Then you have NGOs that are relentlessly supporting everything, even though they\u2019re not visible on the scene. Then there are political parties and Western political influences. So, it seems like everyone is acting on their own, but in reality, they\u2019re all working on the same job\u201d, said Bratina<\/a>, adding that \u201csomeone pushed the students forward\u201d. It\u2019s unclear who.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday, May 10<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serbs, let\u2019s unite against other Serbs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a more freely written article<\/a> titled \u201cWho\u2019s going to tell the students the colour revolution has failed\u201d, Alo\u2019s journalist pointed fingers at \u201csome center\u201d guiding the students, an undefined \u201cforeign actor\u201d, opposition media, and opposition leaders. The text elaborated extensively on how the people are tired of protests and blockades and how it\u2019s high time for Serbs to stop being divided. We’ve already been divided, the text says, into partisans and Chetniks, protestors and loyalists, \u201cbecause at our core we\u2019re all the same\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe foreign actor decided to interfere again, and Serbs, being Serbs, once again took the bait\u201d, the text concludes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unclear which \u201cSerbs\u201d the call for unity is directed at, or whether the students are considered \u201cSerbs\u201d at all. It seems that, for Alo, everyone protesting is actually the other kind of Serb – the less legitimate kind – who spread hatred under the baton of opposition leaders and media that \u201cinflate false information\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday, May 9<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Descendants of former Ustashe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, pro-government tabloid journalists were mostly busy churning out stories about the grand Victory Day parade in Moscow and Vucic\u2019s meeting with Putin. Still, Alo found room to once again take a swipe at the students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Strasbourg, several students attended a debate on Serbia in the European Parliament. The authorities and tabloids were particularly irritated by the speech of MEP Stephen Nikola Bartulica, who is Croatian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Alo \u201cdescendants of Ustashe are lecturing the protesters, who applaud enthusiastically in an unimaginable act of submission\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more than the usual narrative about Croats as villains, what really stood out was another story – about a spit roast in Loznica, where a protest was taking place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thursday, May 8<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From start to finish – it\u2019s always the Croats<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, the Croats are tangling things up for us. The previous Thursday, the role of villains was assigned to Croatian non-governmental organizations and students who went to them \u201cfor instruction\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, it was the Regional Activist School \u201cNovi val\u201d in Osijek, organized at the end of April by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization from Croatia and Serbia. The invitation to the school stated that young people from the region would learn about the role of the media in war, anti-war resistance in the 1990s, the construction of war narratives, war legacy, ethnic relations, and political responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Alo and other tabloids that covered it, the whole event seemed overly suspicious and conspiratorial, so they labelled it an \u201cinstruction session\u201d. The article was written like a police report, with names typed in all capital letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s clear, writes Alo, that the students were using this very gathering to prepare the foundation of an election program they plan to present in the coming weeks \u2014 one that calls for early parliamentary elections, something the government and its allied media absolutely oppose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article (in Serbian) was published on 14\/5\/2025; Author: Marija Vu\u010di\u0107, Milica Ljubi\u010di\u0107 Over the past seven days, Alo\u2019s journalists have continuously linked various individuals and organizations to the students participating in the blockade. We analyzed the past week on the web portal and in the print edition of this tabloid and observed a parade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[86,140,571,318],"class_list":["post-11142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fact-checks","tag-protest","tag-serb-ia","tag-serbia-students","tag-tabloids"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11153,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11142\/revisions\/11153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}