Tanjug

Tanjug is a news agency based in Belgrade, operated by the private company Tačno d.o.o.. It was founded as the Telegraph Agency of the New Yugoslavia on 5 November 1943 in Jajce. The state-owned public enterprise Novinska agencija Tanjug was formally closed with effect from 31 October 2015 but continued to operate, signing contracts with state bodies. The company Tačno was founded on 17 November 2020, and in December 2020 the Government consented to a contract under which the Republic of Serbia, as titleholder, cedes the use of Tanjug’s property rights to Tačno. The public enterprise was deleted from the business register only on 9 March 2021.

Media assets

News agency: Tanjug, whose portal offers news, photo and video services, with an English section.

Television: Tanjug TV, a news channel that began broadcasting on 14 June 2021. Tačno holds approval K477 from the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) for a cable, satellite and IPTV programme linked to tanjug.rs, valid until 28 May 2029.

Ownership and governance

Tačno is owned 60 per cent by Radiotelevizija Pančevo and 40 per cent by Minacord Media, the publisher of the cable channel K1, according to data of the Serbian Business Registers Agency (APR). Minacord Media is controlled by the singer Željko Joksimović, who holds 84 per cent, with the remaining 16 per cent listed as the company’s own stake. Radiotelevizija Pančevo is listed in the REM register and by CompanyWall as owned 100 per cent by Tatjana Cuk, who is therefore the indirect majority owner of Tačno. Its former owner, described in 2021 as almost its sole owner, is the businessman Radoica Milosavljević, whom the Centre for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) describe as close to the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

The state is not an owner of Tačno but remains the titleholder of the trademarks that Tačno uses. The Republic Property Directorate stated that the arrangement was not a sale of Tanjug but a cession of the use of property rights for a set period and for a fee. The tender offered four trademarks for ten years with a starting fee of EUR 567,000, and copyright for use only until 31 December 2020 with a starting fee of EUR 60,481, together EUR 627,481, and required the selected bidder to take over Tanjug’s employees. The Anti-Corruption Council, a Government advisory body, found in May 2022 that many problems of the closed enterprise remained unresolved, above all outstanding obligations that were not transferred to the Republic Property Directorate.

Manja Grčić, who held a 20 per cent stake in Minacord Media, was director of Tačno until 24 February 2026, when APR data showed that she had given up both her director posts and her ownership interests in Minacord Media and Tačno after her appointment as Director General of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS). The same data name Jovana Joksimović as the new director of Tačno, and the impressum of the portal names her as editor-in-chief. CINS and BIRN reported that the editor of Tanjug TV is the wife of Željko Joksimović and that Olivera Zekić, then president of the REM Council, bought a flat and a garage from her in the month in which the Council unanimously licensed Tanjug’s cable programme and did not declare the purchase to the Anti-Corruption Agency.

Source of funding and budget

The state financed Tanjug as a public enterprise until its closure. According to the agency’s management, RSD 17,458,000 was paid in November 2015 as financing for October 2015, RSD 20,731,758 was paid in December 2015 under the decision on the legal consequences of the closure for unpaid wages and other obligations, and no budget funds were paid to finance its activity after 31 October 2015.

Under Tačno, Tanjug operates as a private company, but state bodies are among its clients. According to BIRN, Tačno signed seven contracts for monitoring the activities of ministries in the first nine months of 2021 and earned RSD 14.9 million. BIRN’s investigation of October 2021 also found that in the 25 public procurement contracts awarded to Tanjug and, after the cession, to Tačno between 2017 and that date, worth RSD 48.3 million in total, the agency applied without exception as the only bidder. Separately, the Anti-Corruption Council put the value of procurements contracted with Tačno by ministries and state institutions in 2021 up to mid-November at RSD 22.57 million. In March 2026 Tanjug was reported to have won a contract worth RSD 4.2 million, excluding VAT, for media monitoring and promotion for EXPO 2027 as the only bidder, in a tender that required cooperation with five national-frequency television stations. As reported on 1 July 2026, the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications awarded Tačno RSD 4.3 million for the project Regionalni puls in its co-financing of projects of newspapers and news agencies.

According to the financial statements filed with APR, as published by the business register aggregator CompanyWall, Tačno’s total revenue rose from RSD 675.4 million in 2024 to RSD 704.5 million in 2025, while its net loss grew from RSD 30.0 million to RSD 45.4 million; it had 208 employees in 2024 and 213 in 2025.

Editorial independence

No comprehensive independent monitoring of Tanjug’s output in 2024 to 2026 was identified for this update. The European Commission’s 2025 report on Serbia does not mention Tanjug. In a 2022 publication the Bureau for Social Research (BIRODI) reports that its monitoring found a dominant take-over of news by the private television Pink from Tanjug and that Tanjug’s management threatened criminal complaints over that finding. In 2021 the Coalition for Media Freedom, whose members include the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), objected to the inclusion of Tanjug in a European newsroom funded by the European Commission, saying that it works closely with the ruling structures and had published false information favouring politicians. RTS is a client of Tanjug and obtains agency news, photographs and footage from it.

On 1 September 2025 Tanjug dismissed the journalist Milica Blažević, whose notice cited only redundancy although Tanjug had published a call for new journalists; she told Vreme that the real reason was her support for students and an Instagram post. Tanjug, Tačno and Minacord Media did not respond to Vreme’s questions before publication. In October 2024 an email threatening Tanjug journalists with death over their reporting on Kosovo was condemned by the European and International Federations of Journalists.

AI and digital policy

No publicly available Tanjug policy on artificial intelligence (AI) was identified for this update. On 29 April 2026 Tanjug 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

Tanjug is classified CaPr because the evidence points to sustained editorial control exercised through actors linked to state authorities. The public contracts and grants awarded to Tačno, the state’s retained title to the trademarks and the ownership connections of Tačno’s shareholders establish channels of influence, but they do not alone establish persistent editorial control. The classification rests on the combination of these channels with the documented alignment of Tanjug’s output with the authorities: the 2021 statement of the Coalition for Media Freedom that Tanjug works closely with the ruling structures and published false information favouring politicians, BIRODI’s finding of Pink’s dominant take-over of its news, and the journalist’s account that her 2025 dismissal followed her support for students.

October 2026