ANEM ALARM: The dismissal of the correspondent for the French newspaper Le Figaro, Milica Čubrilo Filipović, may represent a dangerous practice.
The correspondent of the renowned French newspaper Le Figaro, Milica Čubrilo Filipović, received information at the beginning of January that her collaboration had been terminated. As the reason, a responsible individual at this media house stated that the former ambassador of France in Belgrade, now a senior official at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pointed out to the company Dassault, the manufacturer of Rafale aircraft and one of the owners of Le Figaro, that “they have a correspondent in Belgrade who is politically active,” that she was a minister and ambassador, and that this made the collaboration unacceptable (according to the previous director of Le Figaro).
Milica Čubrilo Filipović collaborated with this editorial team even before she became actively involved in politics, and after she ceased her political engagement in 2014, she resumed her collaboration with Figaro four years later. Čubrilo Filipović states that the editorial team had access to all that information. She also emphasizes that she has never written about the purchase of Rafale aircraft, but adds that in conversations with colleagues, she learned that French media discussed more about the relations between Serbia and France and took a critical approach to the politics in Serbia, especially after, as she notes, the regime of Aleksandar Vučić significantly enhanced cooperation with French companies.
In a statement to N1, Milica Čubrilo Filipović stated that she does not know how the information about her reached Dassault, as it is unlikely that they were directly following her work; rather, as she said, "someone from Serbia must have pointed it out."
The ongoing "cleansing" of the media space from professional, yet undesirable journalists and media takes on a new dimension: foreign correspondents from Serbia can also become targets, as happened with the correspondent from Figaro.
In 1994, the regime of Slobodan Milošević revoked the accreditations of correspondents from 13 international media outlets, including Le Monde, Agence France-Presse, El País, Sky News, CNN, The Christian Science Monitor, and Radio Free Europe, due to critical reporting on events in Yugoslavia, with the obvious intent to conceal the repression and the role of the authorities in the wars from the international public.
“The dismissal of Milica Čubrilo Filipović must also be understood as a warning about the potential spread of the practice of eliminating correspondents from global media, carried out through more subtle methods, via influence on media owners. We must inform the journalist unions in France about this, as well as international journalist associations,” stated Veran Matić, President of the Management Board of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) and member of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists.
Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM)
The project "System for the Prevention of Violence and Protection of Journalists" is being implemented by ANEM in partnership with Insajder TV and the Center for the Development of Local Media, with the support of the European Union.
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