Overcoming entrenched history is not easy. The rehabilitation will take years and be agonizing, if it is honest. During the latter half of the 1990s, feisty and often embattled independent news outlets set a critical standard here, especially for the intelligentsia in Belgrade. Opposition magazines like Vreme reported on Milosevic's wrongdoings and rampant government corruption. The respected and popular B-92 radio was a target of repeated government shutdown efforts.
Staff still apologize for business cards that only list mobile-phone numbers due to frequent moves.
If you want to prove you are a good Serb, you have to hate someone. This is the heritage of the old regime, this xenophobia, and it is still there. Right-wing broadcasters, for instance, use new press freedoms to continue to influence smaller stations around the country. And then there are the new leaders themselves, who analysts say have hardly encouraged critical coverage. There is a push for a high degree of loyalty from the new politicians.