When we published the first edition of Novi magazin on May 5th, among the first to call me was a friend I talk to rarely. Honestly and with carefully chosen words she praised the weekly which we were preparing for months.
We put into it our emotions, spiritual will, the knowledge we possess and the hope that, at least occasionally, we will give others the satisfaction we possess by making it what it is.
Maybe the best compliment was given by a friend of mine. Something like, “it is nice to read a weekly in which you don’t skip pages in search of a text that will catch your attention, a weekly that brings back the faith for honesty of the texts and their authors…”.
If I was to describe my friend I would say that she is sharp in her appraisal, without a hint of artificial need to base relationships on compliments that do not deserve to be said.
That is why her call pleasantly surprised me. Two weeks later we talked on a different matter. With a calm tone, like she was talking about an event far away from our region, she told me that a day before that she was attacked by a maniac, on a crowded street not far from her home and in broad day light.
She called for help, defended herself, and then some passerby came and a car…She called the police only because of her conscience:” If he stays free he will hurt someone much weaker than me…”
The next day she read in a daily newspaper, in disbelief, about her trauma and everything that didn’t happened. Wrong circumstances, her profession, the place she was attacked, the way she escaped…The text was simply: ignorance, superficial, loss of measure and compassion towards the victim…
And every day there are more of those headlines in new kinds of misfortunes. And the absurd possibility given to the victims by the editors – confute the text, we will publish it! Confute what?
Newspapers have predominantly lost completely ant human form they had. “Your job is not easy for you”, said my friend to me, without a hint of bad intentions. Our dignity has been brought down long ago by those which we didn’t stop in their intention to do so.
That is why strawberries are more important to Ratko Mladic than the fate of thousands executed in Srebrenica, from the fate of the people “being executed” in the media.
There will never be room for bestiality in Novi magazin. At any given price. I am sure that my friend knows that. But her words “your job is not easy for you” binds…
