Politika

Politika is a Serbian daily newspaper published in Belgrade since 1904. Since 24 January 2025 its publisher, Politika Novine i Magazini d.o.o. (PNM), has been wholly owned by the company Media 026 of the businessman Boban Rajić, who also owns the daily Večernje novosti.

Media assets

Publishing: the daily Politika and its portal politika.rs. PNM also publishes the sports newspaper Sportski žurnal and its portal, and the weekly NIN, whose publishing portfolio and brand NIN d.o.o. announced on 15 May 2026 that it was transferring to PNM. The classification of Politika does not automatically extend to these titles.

Ownership and governance

PNM is owned 100 per cent by Media 026 d.o.o. of Vučak, and Boban Rajić and Mira Glišić-Simić are listed as its directors, according to data of the Serbian Business Registers Agency (APR) published by CompanyWall. Media 026 was registered as the owner of 50 per cent of PNM on 25 May 2022, when Politika and Večernje novosti came under the same owner, and APR registered its holding as 100 per cent on 24 January 2025. The other half had belonged to the joint-stock company Politika a.d., which put it up for sale in October 2024 at a minimum of half of its estimated value of RSD 1.1 billion. The price paid was not disclosed. The Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) opposed the privatisation and had supported a foundation including Politika’s journalists and Matica srpska as co-owners.

Nova describes Rajić as a close associate of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) officials Siniša Mali and Ana Brnabić. On 9 December 2024 the bank NLB banka sold the building at Trg Politika 1 to the company M29, owned by Boban and Bojan Rajić. The price was not disclosed. Rajić said that he would invest about EUR 40 million in the renovation, and the same report states that the media house had lost the building over unpaid debts to the bank.

Politika a.d. is a separate legal entity that no longer holds a stake in PNM. It continues to run a printing house and to publish magazines including Politikin Zabavnik and Svet kompjutera. Under its pre-packaged reorganisation plan, adopted in October 2023, state creditors converted claims into shares, and after the conversion reported on 3 July 2026 the electricity company EPS is its largest shareholder with 27.29 per cent, while the state, directly and through its institutions and companies, controls about 85 per cent.

Source of funding and budget

According to APR financial statements published by CompanyWall, the total revenue of PNM, the publisher of Politika and its other titles, was RSD 850.3 million in 2023, RSD 873.2 million in 2024 and RSD 1,027.0 million in 2025, with net losses of RSD 151.3 million, RSD 183.2 million and RSD 55.6 million, and it had 227, 202 and 192 employees.

Most of the public money identified for PNM came through advertising by state bodies. Raskrikavanje, the fact-checking project of the investigative portal KRIK, identified public contracts and grants worth more than EUR 333,000 for Politika and PNM in 2024, the largest sum among the six dailies it examined, including more than EUR 221,000 for advertising through public procurement. For 2025 it identified about EUR 193,000, of which more than EUR 170,000 came through public procurement and EUR 23,000 through media competitions. In 2026 the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications awarded Politika RSD 1.5 million for the project Manastiri Metohije in its co-financing of projects of newspapers and news agencies.

Editorial independence

Marko Albunović became acting editor-in-chief of Politika on 30 September 2020 and is still listed as acting editor-in-chief in its current impressum.

Raskrikavanje counted 40 manipulative front-page items in Politika in 2023, 96 in 2024 and 253 in 2025, the fourth highest of six dailies. Raskrikavanje also found that texts based solely on the president’s appearances and statements regularly ended up on Politika’s front page in 2025, with his photograph appearing on them 188 times, always positively or neutrally and never negatively, and that the paper consistently places itself among pro-regime media while being subtler than Informer or Alo. In 2025 the Press Council’s Complaints Commission found that Politika.rs breached the Code of Journalists of Serbia in a text of 15 March 2025 headed “Another call to violence: Us or them”, among other things on the ground that the economic and political interests of the publisher must not distort editorial policy. In January 2025 twenty laureates of the Vladislav Ribnikar Fund prize, awarded by Politika, protested against the paper’s treatment of students.

In May 2025 Politika declared the editors Sandra Gucijan and Dorotea Čarnić redundant, and both said that the decision was political and linked it to their support for the student protests. The editors told UNS that the decision was political, and on 22 May 2025 UNS condemned retaliation, pressure and censorship against journalists of RTS, Juronjuz Srbija and Politika. Their lawsuit against Politika was still pending in September 2026, when a hearing set for 9 September was postponed after the case was assigned to another judge; Politika disputes their claim. On 20 August 2026 UNS reported that Olivera Milošević, a journalist who had worked at Politika for 21 years and is a vice-president of UNS, had been dismissed. The stated reason was an alleged breach of a non-compete restriction, which she denied, and she attributed the dismissal to her resistance to political pressure and her objections to changes made to her texts. No internal ombudsman or editorial statute of Politika was identified.

AI and digital policy

No publicly available Politika policy on artificial intelligence (AI) was identified for this update. On 29 April 2026 Politika novine i magazini was among the media and institutions that signed with the Office for IT and eGovernment a protocol of cooperation on developing a national large language model for Serbian.

Classification rationale

The change from CaPu to CaPr in 2026 reflects the full private ownership of PNM registered in January 2025. It does not represent an improvement in editorial independence. The classification of Politika as CaPr rests on the combination of private ownership by a businessman whom Nova describes as close to SNS officials, sustained government-favouring coverage documented by Raskrikavanje, a 2025 Press Council finding that Politika.rs breached the Code of Journalists of Serbia, including its provision that the publisher’s economic and political interests must not affect editorial policy, and reported pressure on journalists, including the 2025 redundancies and the August 2026 dismissal, whose political motive is the journalists’ own account.

October 2026