Goran Matić (; born 6 June 1959) is a Serbian former journalist and politician. He was successively the secretary for information, a minister without portfolio, and the minister for information in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1997 and 2000 and later served in the Yugoslavian parliament. Matić was a member of the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and was at one time the party's vice president.
During his time in government, Matić was known for his vehement criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and his accusations that western powers, particularly the United States of America and Germany, were seeking to destabilize Yugoslavia.
Early life and career Matić was born in Sremska Mitrovica, in what was then the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in the People's Republic of Serbia, Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He worked at the local radio station M, where he became editor-in-chief."The Ugly Duckling's Flight", Vreme, 13 February 1995, accessed 27 June 2026.
Politician During the 1980s, Matić led the municipal League of Socialist Youth in Sremska Mitrovica; he was also active with the league at the provincial level in Vojvodina and served on its presidency at the federal level in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.Borba, 7 December 1988, p. 3.Goran Matić, istinomer.rs, accessed 26 June 2026. He later joined the Yugoslav Left, becoming a party spokesperson in 1996 and serving as a member of the party's directorate.Borba, 18 September 1997, p. 2. He represented the JUL at a rally in Brčko for the 1996 Bosnian general election.Borba, 10 September 1996, p. 4. In March 1997, he spoke against an over-reliance on privatization in modernizing the Yugoslavian economy.Borba, 18 March 1997, p. 2.
Secretary for Information (1997–99) On 27 March 1997, Matić was appointed as secretary for information in the Yugoslavian federal government.Borba, 28 March 1997, p. 1. At the time, the Yugoslav Left was a junior partner in a coalition government led by the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS), and Serbian political life generally was dominated by the authoritarian rule of Socialist Party leader Slobodan Milošević.
Soon after his appointment, Matić announced that Yugoslavia was preparing a new law on information. In so doing, he criticized the standard categorization of the country's media outlets as either "pro-government" or "independent," saying that Yugoslavia had no genuinely "independent" media outlets insofar all as they represented the views of their owners and founders. He added, "the emphasis in the media should be on truth and objectivity, not on dependence and independence." He also criticized opposition municipal governments for permitting broadcasts by international outlets such as Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe, which he described as being "under the direct control of the state bodies of Germany and the United States."Borba, 21 April 1997, p. 3. During this period, Matić promoted the idea of a journalistic code of ethics, in which every Yugoslavian media outlet would be required to formulate and publish its own journalistic guidelines, so that the public would be able to see if its rules were being followed and if its "informational activity" was socially valuable.Borba, 16 June 1997, p. 3.
Matić announced in May 1997 that the federal government planned to set up a "Yugoslav Radio-TV" (RTJ) network, on the grounds that it was not proper for Yugoslavia to be the only federal state in Europe without its own public television.Borba, 22 May 1997, p. 10. In a follow-up speech, he advocated for strengthening the idea of Yugoslavism with the aim of integrating the federation into international frameworks as quickly as possible; in the same speech, he criticized journalists who abandoned "real facts" in favour of "imagination, fabrications and hoaxes," citing a recent headline story in the Dnevni telegraf that he said "demonized" Serbs as a people.Borba, 3 July 1997, p. 6. Matić later said that the main purpose of RTJ would be to ensure that the Yugoslavian parliament and government could communicate with the public and convey information on vital and essential matters to all citizens.Borba, 4 May 1998, p. 6.
Matić argued, early in his tenure as information secretary, that the large number of Albanian language newspapers in Kosovo was proof that Albanians in Yugoslavia had autonomy in information.Borba, 21 May 1997, p. 3. In an interview with Radio Priština in early 1998, he said that Albanians, like all other citizens of Yugoslavia, had the right to express their views and opinions, with the exception of calling for violence or the breakdown of constitutional order; he added that some existing Albanian language papers advocated terrorism and serious violations of human rights and freedoms.Borba, 13 January 1998, p. 7. He criticized Serbia's opposition media more generally in a February 1998 interview with Borba, saying that several outlets that "do not recognize basic professional standards" had been established "as an extension of certain political circles from home and abroad" with the intent of defaming Serbia and Yugoslavia in global public opinion.Borba, 19 February 1998, p. 15.
In the early period of the Kosovo War in 1998, Matić contended that international media outlets such as CNN, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle were systemically reporting on events in Kosovo in a distorted manner to defame Serbia and Yugoslavia, adding that rebroadcasting the views of Voice of America radio in Serbia amounted in his view to a form of "direct subversion and fifth columnism." Referring to the Kosovo conflict more broadly, he said that the Albanian leadership was comprised "not [of] authentic representatives of that nationality in Kosovo and Metohija, but rather of certain interest circles outside Kosovo" and that its members were "instruments for implementing the policy of destroying the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."Borba, 30 March 1998, p. 3. He invited international journalists to report on events in Kosovo several times throughout 1998, saying that neither he nor Serbia had anything to hide.See for instance Borba, 3 September 1998, p. 4.
Matić was appointed as president of the administrative board of the Tanjug news service in June 1998; not long thereafter, he announced that Tanjug would begin presenting information on the internet.Borba, 20 June 1998, p. 12.Borba, 11 July 1998, p. 5. The following month, he was appointed to the board of directors of the University of Belgrade and, separately, was re-elected as a member of the JUL directorate.Borba, 4 July 1998, p. 3.Borba, 21 July 1998, p. 1.
Throughout 1998, several previously unlicensed radio and television stations in Yugoslavia were given official certification.Borba, 2 June 1998, p 3. Matić noted at the end of the year that more than four hundred stations had been legalized in this way, pointing to this as evidence of media freedom in the country.Borba, 29 December 1998, p. 3.
Matić said in late 1998 that Germany was "supporting terrorists and threatening military intervention" in Kosovo with the intent of creating an international protectorate in the province, and with longer-term plans of enacting a similar destabilization plan in Vojvodina.Borba, 24 September 1998, p. 4.
Minister without portfolio (1999) On 13 January 1999, Matić was appointed as a minister without portfolio in Yugoslavia's government.Borba, 14 January 1999, p. 1. Prior to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, he charged that international media forces were creating a false narrative of events in Kosovo and "building a trend towards military intervention."Borba, 24 March 1999, p. 4.
During the NATO bombing campaign, Matić defended Yugoslavia as a multi-ethnic state and said that the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Albanians, and other communities in Kosovo was being carried out by NATO's war machinery.Borba, 24 April 1999, p. 6. In May 1999, he sent a public letter to several international media organizations, criticizing them for not condemning attacks on journalists in Yugoslavia.Borba, 8 May 1999, p. 2. On a number of occasions, he accused NATO of deliberately targeting civilians with the intent of creating mass panic.See for instance Borba, 3 June 1999, p. 6.
Shortly after the end of the conflict, Matić inaugurated Tanjug's renovated International Press Centre in Belgrade. He said that Tanjug had an important role to play in countering propaganda against Yugoslavia and exposing what he described as the crimes of NATO.Borba, 29 June 1999, p. 6.Borba, 20 July 1999, p. 3.
Minister of Information (1999–2000) Yugoslavia's government was restructured on 12 August 1999, and Matić was appointed to the newly created position of minister of information.Borba, 13 August 1999, p. 3. His duties were not substantively different from before. Shortly after his appointment, he announced that Tanjug was expanding its operations, describing the media service "the pillar" of Yugoslavia's "information defence."Borba, 2 September 1999, p. 3. In an interview with Radio Belgrade in early September 1999, he said that the NATO countries were continuing their "extended aggression" on Yugoslavia through media campaigns and by sponsoring some opposition groups in the country.Borba, 21 September 1999, p. 4. He later described the opposition Alliance for Change as a "NATO gendarme."Borba, 19 October 1999, p. 1.
In late October 1999, Matić accused Republika Srpska prime minister Milorad Dodik (who was at the time considered a western ally) of attempting to destabilize Yugoslavia through the introduction of counterfeit currency.Borba, 28 October 1999, p. 1. He later accused International Federation of Journalists leader Aiden White of demonizing Yugoslavia, ignoring crimes committed against Serbs in Kosovo, and attempting to utilize Serbia's "independent" media in a broader destabilization campaign.Borba, 18 March 2000, p. 4.
Matić described the assassination of Boško Perošević on 13 May 2000 as terrorist act with "a deep ideological and political background" and "the aim of further destabilizing Yugoslavia from the outside."Borba, 15 May 2000, p. 4. In the same period, he accused the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) of trying to take power in Serbia through "political terror."Borba, 16 May 2000, p. 6.
In late May 2000, Matić was elected as president of the Yugoslav Left's city board for Novi Sad.Borba, 23 May 2000, p. 4.
Matić sent a public letter to the ambassadors of the member states of the United Nations Security Council in early June 2000, expressing his "astonishment" at International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's statement that NATO neither intentionally targeted civilians nor committed war crimes in the previous year's bombing campaign.Danas, 5 June 2000, p. 22. He said that the ICTY, thorough Del Ponte's statement, had "definitely sided with the aggressor and become an accomplice in NATO's crimes in Yugoslavia."Danas, 5 June 2000, p. 22. In the same period, Matić accused the CIA of sponsoring the assassination of Montenegrin politician Goran Žugić so as to remove any possible impediment to Vukašin Maraš being able to dominate Montenegrin politics through his control over Milo Đukanović.Danas, 7 June 2000, p. 1. This was a contentious claim even by Matić's usual standards; an article in the newspaper Vreme described Matić's comments as "ridiculous."Velizar Brajović, "The 'Belgrade' Style", Vreme, 10 June 2000, accessed 27 June 2026.