Brnabic: Media financed by USAID systemically damaged Serbia

BELGRADE - Serbian Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic said on Thursday so-called investigative media outlets financed by USAID had greatly damaged Serbia in a systemic manner.

"In the past 10-11 years, they have been implying that anyone who engages in politics is, in a way, corrupt or wants to be corrupt. That has made it impossible for the many quality people who wanted to help, or were perhaps helping from the background all the time, to get involved as state secretaries or ministers because they would, in fact, immediately be targeted by various media such as Krik," Brnabic said on Pink TV.

It is now clear that there is no such thing as independent media, she said.

"You can see that those media outlets and the people working there were quite dependent. It is just that they were dependent on the American administration and, to make things worse, not on a US administration elected by American citizens, but on what is referred to as the deep state," Brnabic said.

She noted that Serbia would investigate the spending of USAID funds if the US authorities made such a request.