For those of you who don’t know, Russia limited its gas exports through Ukraine on Tuesday evening (January 6), and completely stopped it early Wednesday morning thus leaving a lot of people from those European countries that don’t have significant gas reserves drinking rakia (local, and often homemade beverage with a high alcohol content), or other such spirits to keep warm. In a nutshell, the disagreement between Russia and Ukraine quickly enveloped Serbia which was plunged into an energy crisis. Even though it was Christmas, the Serbian government scrambled and held emergency meetings on the crisis, and even created an emergency crisis center that is in constant session.

And where were Serbian newspaper reporters; did they do their duty and diligently report on the crisis; and were they there to oversee the way the government is handling it? No. All of them were probably enjoying Christmas Eve with loads of food, wine, and rakia.

All newspapers I came across on Wednesday morning were printed on early Tuesday morning and were editions for both Tuesday and Wednesday. To the best of my knowledge, for 48 hours no newspapers were printed despite a major gas crisis that is taking place in the middle of the winter.

While I understand that it takes a significant number of people to get to the end product of the newspaper industry (from reporters and editors, all the way to printing house workers), it is way too important to any free country to just take a day off just because it’s Christmas.

Yes, not all media took a day off. Radio and TV stations kept broadcasting but some people, like myself, simply don’t watch TV (some maybe don’t even have a TV set), and don’t listen to the radio. Those people were left clueless and were wondering why are their radiators working at a reduced rate, if they were working at all.

The newspaper industry taking a day off is not at all strange in Serbia. Every year, two day editions of major newspapers go out on January 6, and three day editions go out on December 31. I don’t know what they are thinking. Perhaps they believe that the whole population is drunk enough not to care. One thing is sure though, they are not doing their duties properly.

Photo courtesy of longwood.edu.