Regional TV stations follow the attitude of the United Nations
Belgrade – Kosovo will be not be an independent state for the new regional television N1, which is the exclusive partner of CNN for the region, told Danas Jugoslav Cosic, Director of the Program for Serbia of the new regional television , which will broadcast from Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb. He said the new regional TV station will treat Kosovo as the United Nations.
– N1 will formally follow the UN, according to which Kosovo is not an independent state. When we show a map of Serbia in the program, Kosovo will be set aside only by the dashed line, says Cosic to our list. Television N1, otherwise, starts to work on 30 October and all major cable operators in the region will have it in its offer.
A similar policy towards Kosovo’s status has Al Jazeera Balkans, also regional television owned by foreigners. As the director of news and programs Goran Milic said to Danas, Al Jazeera Balkans did not officially recognize the Republic of Kosovo.
– English Al Jazeera provides a map of Serbia without Kosovo, we provide Serbia with Kosovo, but in two different colours – so they’re two and one country. Our reporters when they go to, let’s say, to the Jarinje, they say: “Here we are in Jarinje, at the crossing called by Belgrade as an administrative and by Pristina as state border.” As long as the UN does not recognize Kosovo, we will not say state, said Milic.
On the other hand, although the authorities of the Russian Federation support Serbia’s policy toward Kosovo, Russia’s state television, while reporting the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Belgrade, presented a map of Serbia without Kosovo. In the first channel news, after the announcement of inclusion of reporter from the scene, a graphical representation of the territory of the former Yugoslavia was showed. As the centre of the event, the city of Belgrade was marked with a red dot, Serbia with slightly lighter colour than the rest. However, “colour” was absent from the territory of Kosovo, so it was shown as it is not part of Serbia.
