Record Holders in Southern Serbia: Two Media Outlets from Vranje Received Nearly 30 Million for Projects

RTV Vranje has received 13,850,000 dinars for four projects exclusively in Vranje, covering television, radio, the internet portal of the radio-television station, and the portal "When Hardship Strikes." The owner of this media outlet is Zoran Veličković, who also owns 85% of TV Bujanovac, which received 650,000 dinars in the same call for proposals.

Considering that the total funds for media projects in this city amounted to 30 million dinars, nearly half of the allocated amount went to Veličković's media outlets.

RTV Vranje also received 500,000 dinars in Trgovište.

TV Vranjska Plus in Vranje received 12,750,000 dinars for two projects. The owner of this television station is Marijan Stošić, and local media report that it serves as a party mouthpiece for the local SNS. The same media outlet received 1,615,000 dinars for two projects in Vladičin Han and 400,000 dinars in Trgovište.

The portal Koštana, registered in March of last year in Vranje, received 400,000 dinars for projects in both Vranje and Vladičin Han.

In Bujanovac, according to the commission's proposal, RTV Bujanovac was supposed to receive 760,000 dinars, while the portal Koštana was to receive 180,000 dinars. However, the municipality decided to reject this proposal after reducing the budget allocation for media projects from three million to 200,000 dinars in a budget rebalancing in July. The commission has been advised to create a new distribution of funds accordingly.

In Preševo, funds have not yet been allocated to media outlets for this year, while in Surdulica, the process for 2024 has not been completed, even though the project evaluation committee was established on January 31 of this year.

More information can be found in the ANEM media competition database.

The project of the Association of Independent Electronic Media "Participatory Monitoring of the Implementation of Co-Financing Processes for Projects" is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the MATRA program. ANEM is solely responsible for the content, which does not necessarily reflect the official views of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.