Sportski žurnal
Sportski žurnal is a Serbian sports daily newspaper. About half of the pages are devoted to football, whereas the rest deals with athletics, auto racing, basketball, boxing, cycling, judo, karate, handball, tennis, shooting, skiing, swimming, volleyball, waterpolo, wrestling, and other olympic and non-olympic sports. This may slightly vary in the off-season or during big sporting events.
Žurnal's first issue appeared in 17 May 1990, and it has since been published under the umbrella of Politika AD's family of newspapers and magazines.
Controversy
Known for spreading criticism of foreign players and supporting a discriminatory theory that foreign players should be welcomed only if they are "at least as double as good that a domestic player on same position", the newspaper had hard time condemning the racial abuse suffered by Brazilian FK Partizan player Everton Luiz, when, on 20 February 2017, in an away Serbian SuperLiga match against FK Rad, already notorious hooligans from the home side with a long portfolio of similar incidents, United Force, made continuous racist remarks and chants towards the Partizan player. Embarrassing chants of primitive behavior frequently even audible on the TV live transmission itself, culminated with an emotional outburst of the player in the 70th minute when he stopped the game and grabbed the ball with his hands while was in her possession and taking the racial abuse from the stand where the FK Rad supporters were. Feeling revolted, he was promptly supported by his teammates and technical stuff which despite their efforts couldn't prevent Everton from falling into a deeply emotional state of sadness which resulted in tears in front of cameras making the live transmission. The case had international coverage by the media, however, depite all, Sportski zurnal made a soft and balanced account of the event which after the initial report gave full space to the FK Rad vice-director, Jelena Polic, whose open defense of the racial abuse by the fans of her team created an even bigger worldwide condemnation. Sportski zurnal limited to label as "scandalous" her allegations in the article title, while actually took the chance to transmit her allegations further explaining them and repeatedly referring to her as "lady" with one occasion even going as far as saying that those were the words of that "gorgeous lady". During the following months, Sportski zurnal made no interview whatsoever with Everton, kept their anti-foreigners overall narrative, and the culmination was a series of reports praising the fine work and excellent organisation Jelena Polic was doing by leading the woman's team of FK Rad. If there were any doubts on where the editorial board stands regarding that incident, they disappeared when at the end of the season Everton was clearly among the best players in the league, and deserved no exclusive space, while the "gorgeous lady" that praised and supported the racial abuse received exclusive news report glorifying her alleged beauty.Another recurring event in Sportski zurnal is to see constant differentiation between domestic and foreign players, with frequent outrageous blatant description of players as "dark-skinned". Example, "Tamnoputi vezista koga krase brzina i pokretljivost...", that being just one example of the usual description of a player by which subconsciously remind readers that it is a player of different skin colour they are referring to. Despite commentators having called the attention of this for already years, nothing has changed, and the redaction continues labeling sportists by their skin colour pretending to be totally unaware of the problems and harm it makes. In a country and a society that was quite avant-garde and progressive regarding racial tolerance and inter-ethnic exchange, especially during the period of Cold War when Yugoslavia lead the Non-Aligned movement and involved in the struggle for independence, decolonisation, and education of their own people of countries of the third world, time when Yugoslav companies got lucrative deals for major projects worldwide, and Yugoslav universities were filled with foreign exchange students, tolerance towards foreigners was at highest levels. Yugoslavia was accomplishing major successful results in numerous sports during the 1970s and 1980s and frequently their clubs became pioneer in bringing foreign signings compared to eastern-bloc countries. However, the start of the Yugoslav wars and the UN sanctions which imposed Serbian and Montenegrin teams absence from international competitions from 1992 till 1995 created a disastrous result for clubs in all modalities, which, without being able to fight for continental titles, ended making them loose theur main motivation. Clubs, which had just been European and International champions in football, as Red Star did in 1991, or KK Partizan in basketball same year, saw themselves having to search for new ways to survive, and most opted to start a massive selling of players to foreign clubs. By time sanctions were lifted and clubs could return to continental competitions, 3 years of wars, economic sanctions and record inflation which resulted in huge impoverishment of the society, meant clubs were no longer in the position of forming and keeping strong teams able to challenge the top ones, but rather had to continue surviving by selling players. Corruption, which had spread all over Serbian society, made its way into sports as a rapid spreading disease. Enjoying the reputation and value Yugoslav sportsman had archived in recent periods, obscure underground figures made their way into sports with its main purpose of expanding their fortunes by selling sportsman to top world clubs. The club's achievements became irrelevant, just as their results, which were only important to match the fixed outcomes for the betting agencies which from being inexistent in the late 1980s, were inaugurated by hundreds a week in any open corner. During the 1990s, football in Serbia saw its lowest possible, with frequent scenes that would be unimaginable elsewhere. As show-off of their power and judicial impotence, war-lords like Arkan took minor clubs, FK Obilić in his case, and made them champions in record time by successive promotions. Everyone simply knew they had to be the champions. Football, just as many other sports, was not played anymore competitivelly, and professionalism came to its lowest. There was no money from titles, sponsors were weak, attendances were low, and European competitions provided more expenses and obligations than proffit. Locally, people turned to the only rentable outcome, convince the coach to "force" your son in the team, and let's hope some foreign club notices him and split the money if they buy him. In this environment, foreigners became very unwelcome because they could only ruin the deal for the son by showing how crappy he is, and then, coaches often knew no foreign languages, so besides making enemies with one kid's family, he would also avoid making himself ridiculous by showing everyone that his English skills are absolute zero. Its in 1992 that all this starts and lasts strongly during the 1990s, while progressivelly, but very slowly and with many many setbacks, tries to improve somewhere since the mid-2000s. During this time, many great players from previous times, have splendid careers abroad, and some as coaches or others in other ways, tried to return to Serbia and bring their wisdom and knowledge to put it in service to improve local football by bringing the modern methods which demonstrably had been working elsewhere, but instead of a welcome and joy, they are received right the opposite way, as people who want to ruin the corrupt scheme of selling players and making money by fixing matches.
It is precisely here that Sportski zurnal plays a crucial role. As the most popular sports newspaper, takes that advantage to manipulate public opinion and using a system of misleading and misinforming opinion articles, clearly backed by an entire group of sport workers whose role is elevated to statuses of "legend´s" and opinion, to statuses of mighty wisdom, clearly spends decades refusing to adapt to modern football, consider alternative views, and blatantly selectively chooses the space and time it provides to people sharing their opinion, against others. Instead of being an independent news agency, they became purely a weapon by which an identified group of foreigners-critics propagate their propaganda. Since there is clearly a major number of local coaches unable to find job outside Serbia and have difficulties in communicating with foreigners, while in the same time they believe that sparing the local youngsters from competition will improve their chances of being sold abroad, they firmly stick together defending the 4 foreigners limit per club, a limit radical as no other even nearly in Europe, despite Serbia being basically in Central Europe at EU doors. In what was once a popular place for commenting, today, there is clear censorship towards known commentators with opposing views of theirs, while in the same time they fill the comments section with one same person signing different names but unable to even disguise its writing style and use of same expressions. With their chief editor, Zoran Stojadinovic, making frequent articles in which repeatedly expresses the same view how foreigners are hurting "our children", it is the condoning of racial attacks such as the one Everton suffered and glorification of a person which responded him by sending him to him some land, that indicates that Sportski zurnal as a newspaper suffers serious problems regarding racism and "dark-skinned" sportists.