Good morning! We often witness disparagement of the profession of political analysts, which is a consequence of ignorance, as well as the abundance of self-proclaimed people, who call themselves like that.
By clicking here, you join our Viber group, where we inform you live from hour to hour about news and answer your questions directly.
Political analyst
Political analyst or female political analyst – a profession that is not seriously taken in Montenegro by people who without much effort declare themselves to be political analysts, but also by those who accept them as such.
There are two requirements for someone to be a political analyst – a) education and/or b) professional practice of political analysis. Reducing the profession of a political analyst to media and online commenting on political processes, no matter how coherent and interesting it may be, is trivializing the profession.
In order for someone to engage in political analysis under the title of political analyst, the minimum requirement should be that that someone is a political scientist. So, they should graduate from the Faculty of Political Sciences and earn a degree in political science. It’s very similar to law, sociology, or any other profession.
The second condition, which can stand on its own, but also be a supplement to the first condition, is that those people engage in political analysis in their daily work. So, that they are paid to engage in political analysis in the job description within a company, non-governmental organization, political party.
Within the profession of political analysts there are special expert analyses, and people specialize in the analysis of certain spheres of politics – some analyze political economy, some also have legal knowledge and deal with the legislature and legal system, some with public opinion. Someone does it academically, conducting scientific research, and someone does it for private companies, providing consulting services in the sphere of political risk assessment in countries where a company is interested in investing. Finally, analysts also work for intelligence services and large non-governmental organizations that make reports on the state of freedom in some societies.
So, in order to engage in political analysis at a level above political commentator, you should have the title of political scientist or engage in political analysis through your every-day job.
A chaotic phenomenon is happening in our country, which is in line with our chaotic reality – people declare themselves to be political analysts, and are accepted as such after one of the journalists notices their talent for commenting on political processes on social networks.
An interesting example is Stefan Djukic, who has been present as Vijesti’s commentator for many years, and lately he has been invited more and more often by RTCG and the Montenegrin desk of Radio Free Europe, led by Slavica Brajovic.
He is a decent man, who comments on the political reality from his point of view, and my dealing with him today is not aimed at canceling Djukic or erasing him from the public space. I take this example as a paradigm of a superficial approach to political analysis on the part of newsrooms, which also in the sphere of political analysis biasedly choose sides, and choose as interlocutors those who suit them more politically.
We know for Vijesti that it is politically biased, and it is natural for Djukic, as someone who is close to URA and publicly supported the coalition connected to URA in the 2020 elections, to be its frequent interlocutor. Things should be a bit different when it comes to RTCG and RSE, but alas.
However, the thing that does not fit in with all these media companies in an ideological sense, except maybe part of the new management and editorial board of RTCG, is that Djukic comes from the pro-Russian part of the political spectrum, who as an anti-NATO activist stayed in the occupied Crimea, after which he wrote an apologetic column for Vijesti about life on the occupied peninsula. Djukic was a guest of the occupation authorities there, at the invitation of Just Russia, a small pro-Putin party, a coalition partner of United Russia. He was part of a larger delegation of right-wing and populist parties from Europe, together with the son of Vojislav Seselj.
And all this is legitimate, if Djukic is open about his political agenda, and if these mentioned media companies transparently show him to us as a political commentator from that side of the political spectrum. If he still presents himself as a neutral and objective observer, then we are already in trouble.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst
