Judging by official Serb rhetoric and the accolades Serb leaders heap on reporters who toe the current regime's line,the state of Serbian journalism has never been healthier or more patriotic. But God forbid you're a journalist who's not on the Milosevic payroll.

Renegade Serb media mogul Slavko Curuvija, founder and editor of the independent Belgrade papers the Dnevni Telegraf and the Evropljanin, was assassinated after being attacked repeatedly in the pro-Milosevic state media. His murder, not coincidentally, remains unsolved. Now the state media, including the party organ newspaper Politika Ekspres and the state-controlled television station, working in concert, have launched new attacks aimed at painting other key opposition figures as traitors and thereby unifying public support behind Milosevic.

Independent Belgrade media and political analysts interpret the Curuvija killing and the failure of the police to seriously investigate it as a warning to all potential opponents of the regime. The message: This is the fate awaiting all who dare challenge Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Moreover, independent journalists fear that the regime will maintain today's heavily-censored and jingoistic media scene even after the bombing campaign is over.

Gunned down just in front of his home a few days into NATO's bombing campaign with 15 bullets in the back, Curuvija had been an influential member of Serbian society, an insider critical of the regime and the course Milosevic had set for Serbia. Despite that, and even before the official investigation was launched, the authorities ruled out the possibility that this crime may have been politically motivated.

The killing and the commentary have been more effective than any censorship or reporting instructions from the Interior Ministry in bringing would-be critical editors and journalists into line, reaffirming in their minds the risks inherent in their profession.

Those individuals who have tried to build independent media in Serbia during the past decade wonder how, under current conditions or in the future, they can ensure that views other than those of the state are aired, that journalists are protected, and that laws brought in during the state of emergency are not abused to settle scores with the handful of opposition political activists.

These have become burning issues since the regime began using state television to battle what it terms the "fifth column" of internal traitors, personified by the opposition politicians Zoran Djindjic and Vuk Obradovic -- leaders of the Democratic and Social Democratic Parties, respectively -- as a result of statements they allegedly made to foreign media.

Milosevic and the members of his regime have realized that the media is a more powerful method for muzzling internal opposition than any state-mandated restrictions on reporting.

Television viewers in Yugoslavia do not know what Djindjic and Obradovic actually said, since the statements themselves have not been broadcast on state television. They are just aware of the interpretation of the statements presented in a commentary on the state-controlled television station. Both Djindjic and Obradovic reject the "official" characterizations of their comments.

According to the commentary, the electorate had turned its back on Djindjic and Obradovic who "cannot grasp what is left from their so-called democratic opposition, that walked the streets of Belgrade two years ago under American and German flags." State television alleged, based on that snippet of history, that both politicians are encouraging NATO to maintain its bombing campaign. Further, the commentary alleged that Djindjic aspires to be the post-war president of Yugoslavia.

"Is the destruction of the country the price that he is prepared to pay for being a presidential candidate?" said the state commentator.

Obradovic, a former general, is, according to the same commentary, no less cooperative in his relations with NATO. He too would be delighted, the commentary alleged, to see the deployment NATO troops in Kosovo.