By Ana Martinoli
Media theorist and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU)
Miloš Medenica, sentenced in the first instance to ten years and two months in prison for organised crime, smuggling, and other criminal offences, has over recent weeks become a source of information for a section of the Serbian public via an X profile and a Telegram channel.
He has been providing insights into controversial and never officially disclosed links between the police, the judiciary, politicians, and crime. Medenica, who became unavailable to law enforcement authorities after his first-instance verdict was handed down, is currently making announcements via the Telegram channel “Medeni Knows Everything” (Medeni sve zna).
He represents an interesting, paradigmatic phenomenon in a society characterised by captured media, low public trust in traditional sources of information, months of civil unrest, and increasingly frequent clashes between criminal groups. At a time when accurate information is worth a fortune and the truth becomes a matter of negotiation – dependent on one’s choice of television channel – Medenica could be treated as a trivial, semi-entertaining phenomenon calling out corrupt officials in street vernacular. However, he is certainly not that; moreover, his popularity and its effects could be a worrying signal, raising the question of whether this is a sort of political-communication operation.
To begin with, why does a section of the public trust him specifically, whilst official institutions and mainstream media are distrusted? Mistrust in institutions is a chronic disease of Serbian society, and when it comes to the media, this illness has dramatically progressed. According to the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report, trust in the media in Serbia stands at 22 per cent. When trust in traditional, conventional information channels is so low, the audience turns to other sources in an attempt to understand what is happening around them. Consequently, the space vacated by the media is easily and effectively filled by anyone who offers the sensation of “finally speaking the truth”.
The format Medenica uses – addressing the camera directly, adopting the tone of an insider, promising that “more will be revealed”, and identifying with the viewers – is no accident. An informal tone, paired with a style that mimics investigative journalism, makes the content easy to digest, yet it lacks the dimension of verification and professional journalistic credibility. With Medenica, there are no dual sources, no editorial board taking responsibility, and no possibility of challenging the content through legal means.
Yet, for the audience, none of this often matters. “Medeni’s” videos are shared and commented on, becoming part of daily discussions, not because they are verified, but because they confirm a pre-existing suspicion: that official institutions are hiding a great deal, and that their interest is not the interest of the citizens. This mechanism is well known in media theory and is described as replacing verification with confirmation – the audience does not seek proof; it seeks to be told what it already suspects, and rewards the source that delivers this quickest and most directly, regardless of its reliability.
Mainstream media controlled by the authorities rarely (if ever?) broach topics that threaten political elites, the government, or point to links between politics and organised crime. The remaining professional media, even when willing, cannot cover such topics and stories in line with journalistic standards because they adhere to the postulates of elementary reporting ethics – requiring evidence and statements that would pass editorial and legal scrutiny. This creates an information vacuum that is not the result of a lack of public interest, but a lack of channels that could satisfy that interest in a reliable, research-backed manner. A fugitive from a prison sentence who has nothing to lose – professionally, legally, or reputationally – becomes the most visible actor ready to fill that vacuum, regardless of the quality and truthfulness of what he offers.
The Medenica media phenomenon also foreshadowed a problem that will become increasingly common in the not-so-distant future: the authenticity of such content and the ability to verify it. Namely, in February this year, regarding one of the first videos in which Medenica addressed the public, the Montenegrin police announced that it was “synthetically generated”, meaning it was created using artificial intelligence tools to create a false impression and deceive the public. Even though such suspicions are likely incorrect regarding the series Medenica has been publishing over the past few weeks, they point to a serious crisis in information. Audiences will less and less frequently, and with greater difficulty, judge whether something is true based on sources and professional methods; instead, they will do so based on how “convincing” a video looks and how much it confirms an already established view. When this is combined with the impossibility of technically and factually verifying content, trust becomes entirely decoupled from verifiability. The audience believes the one who acts transparently the best, not the one who truly is transparent.
Ultimately, what the Medenica phenomenon perhaps demonstrates most clearly is not that a convicted criminal on the run has become a reliable source. It shows that when institutions and the media fail to fulfil their roles, public trust is ready to migrate anywhere. The question that remains is not merely a media issue, but a security one: who controls the channel through which this trust is being redirected, and in whose interest?
Medenica himself, as a person convicted in the first instance and on the run, has a clear, highly specific motive – not to present himself as a victim of the system, but to build an image of himself as a sort of Robin Hood: a man who knows crime and corruption from the inside and is now allegedly turning against them to tell the “people” the truth. This narrative stance is more dangerous than that of a victim, because the audience can view a victim with distance and scepticism, whereas the character of a reluctant hero – the one who “was on the inside and spoke out” – more easily wins trust and a moral authority that does not belong to him, given his own role in a criminal organisation. This inversion, from a convicted participant to an alleged whistleblower, is the mechanism by which a criminal biography is transformed into a guarantee of credibility, instead of subjecting it to additional scrutiny and demands for verification.
Of course, it would be naive to view the “Medeni” phenomenon as an individual rebellion and engagement. The platform he uses, the format in which his content is distributed, and the speed at which it spreads raise the question of whether all this transcends narrow personal interest. The Telegram channel reporting on the addresses of the fugitive convict does not have to be exclusively his project. It could also be a tool in the hands of anyone who stands to benefit from the public compromise of a specific institution, individual, or political line, while the mastermind remains invisible behind a pseudonym and a non-existent editorial team. This is precisely what guerrilla channels as a format enable, whilst traditional journalism does not – the absence of a byline, the absence of an address of responsibility, and the absence of anyone who could be asked, “Where did you get this from?”.
Therefore, “Medeni Knows Everything” is not just a symptom of citizens’ mistrust in institutions, and indeed the media. It is also a testing ground to see how easy it is, in a society with 22 per cent trust in the media, to redirect public attention, shape narratives about guilt and/or innocence, and discredit an undesirable actor without investing in one’s own visibility or accountability. It is impossible to state with absolute certainty whether Medenica himself, his associates, or some third political or criminal structure extracting its own benefit stands behind individual posts. However, the effect is always the same – the public gets a sense of being informed, whilst in reality, it remains without the means to verify the source, motive, or truth of what it believes. Until that changes, the scope for the abuse of trust will not shrink; on the contrary. The crucial question is who will fill it, with what, and for whose benefit. And whose face they will use to do so.
(Radar, 29.06.2026)
https://radar.nova.rs/drustvo/milos-medenica-osudenik-izvor-informisanja/