Recent scholarship on the democratization and Europeanization of the Western Balkans as well as the field of media studies have not amply dealt with the concept of political clientelism in the media in this region, which has been a major feature of the post-Milošević democratic transition in Serbia. This article examines the gradual political instrumentalization of the media landscape in Serbia under the ruling party since 2012. It will argue that despite the adoption of the new media laws first in 2014 and their amendments in 2023, government influence of the media outlets vis-à-vis more subtle mechanisms of control, has served to undermine media freedom rather than fostering democratic changes through genuine domestic reforms. This type of more subtle mechanism of indirect control is visible through the captured regulatory authority, state subsidies in the media vis-à-vis project co-financing, advertising contracts where the government serves as an intermediary, and the recent amendments to the new media laws adopted in October 2023 that practically “legalized” government interference in the Serbian media.
