BELGRADE media loyal to the Serbian government ignored the largest demonstrations in the country's recent history last week. While most students were actively supporting the the protests, state-owned television ran a feature on the quality of university food.

A few days before the government stifled reporting of the protests against the annulment of local election results, discussions between academics, broadcasters and journalists revealed concretely what is well known in the abstract that, even with goodwill, creating democracies is difficult in "societies in transition".

Establishing a democratic contract between the state and the media (an issue not covered by the Dayton agreement) is made even more fraught by structures and habits of domination carried over from communist regimes.

Given the location and the history, this was not just another international gathering: the business was difficult and urgent, especially for Serbia. The president of the Serbian Democratic Center Foundation, set up in 1993, MP Dragoljub Micunovic, had invited 60 or so academics and journalists to examine the role of broadcasting in the development of central and east European democracies.

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We came from Bucharest, Prague, St Petersburg, Sofia, and Warsaw; a handful from western Europe and north America, including a Canadian broadcaster who had been in the region as a war correspondent, and a much larger group not only from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), but also Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Several participants worked for the variously described opposition/independent/alternative media, often speaking bleakly about past and present abuse of media. But the acceptance list included broadcasters from the Serbian state-controlled system (RTS), and even information minister Aleksandar Tijanic. In the event, they did not come.

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Their absence mattered. Known for setting an exceptional standard of moderation and fairmindedness, both as an academic (speciality: the history of ideas) and as a politician, Professor Micunovic wanted dialogue between the government and its critics in the presence of foreigners.

Mr Tijanic, with his reputation for robust and colourful advocacy, was missed. The control and influence of government over the media is much stronger in Serbia than the Council of Europe would accept. In discussion the council's international norms were invoked for their leverage value (they proved effective a few days later when the council rebuked and corrected the newly admitted Croatian government for foul play in allocating a radio franchise).

The concept, let alone the practice, that broadcasting should serve the public and civil society, not the party in power, will not be understood overnight or without struggle. It is a notion that needs strenuous protection everywhere.

When the rules of the game are not based on an accepted constitutional tradition, but are set in its own interests by the ruling party, criticism seems like the act of a dissident and not a democratic citizen. This sense, tangible at times in the meetings, has pervasive effects on the society. In the United Kingdom and the United States, we agonise about the influence of spin doctors and news managers, but supposing it is the spin doctors who run the media, what then? Media and journalists ambitious to be independent as they are in mature democracies find that journalistic independence gets constantly confused with political opposition.

University staff educating would-be journalists there know that the very meaning of professional is problematic. Students ask: "Why bother us with all this stuff about ethics? We just want to be good professionals."

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Some said there was more freedom of expression under Tito than now, but the new Yugoslavia is, and means to remain, a pluralist society, however uncertainly. At the first session Miroljub Radojkovic, of the department of journalism in the politics faculty at the University of Belgrade, offered a persuasive analysis of the competing and interacting forces at work in his country - paternalism, nationalism and commercialism. He wanted to see "all interests given their voice and honour". His department, unlike most others in socialist countries, was, he claimed, "never treated as a party school or service".

No one walked out when the last session was chaired by Branka Otesevic, the television critic of Politika, the main newspaper and close to the government, and Eleonore Prohic, a producer from TV Politika, same stable, said to be less close. Mrs Prohic is well known in European Broadcasting Union circles; both women are evidently much respected by their peers. "Many here have been victims, have tried to storm the media Bastilles," said Mrs Prohic.

I asked Mrs Prohic if she was satisfied with the round table. She said it was important in itself to talk about the problems. Some Yugoslavs, sceptical whether television could ever be a source for good, were in no doubt that the West had its problems too. It was as well that those from the West were present as colleagues, not as consultants. "CNN is a global vulture on a voyeuristic quest for the carcasses of war," it was said. Pointing to a real difficulty with the medium, someone said: "When television goes away, the problems don't. The refugees and the raped women are still with us." Unless accompanied by a proper public debate on the uses of broadcasting and about accountable regulatory bodies, not too much is expected of commercial routes to intellectual and political liberation. Private money has had some success in the newspaper field, but in broadcasting it has led largely to what another participant from Belgrade University, Milena Dragicevic Sesic, calls the "evasive medium system".

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"People get tired of fighting the government. They had then to fight to survive . . . to buy social . . . status, (so) rich war profiteers invested money in (that system)." At least one private television network, Palma, makes the point, with its lifestyle programming and ad-magazines by day, and its porn movies by night.

Meanwhile, international contact is valued. The United Nations' white-marked cars outside the conference venue were a conspicuous reminder that the outside world is still involved in the region. The round table itself was supported by the Fund for the Open Society (Belgrade), the European Community, the Council of Europe, Unesco, the Karl Adenauer Stiftung, among others. Some of the alternative media represented would not exist without the Soros Yugoslav Foundation. Others seek, not too hopefully, to interest foreign investors in their local radio stations.

The international community in Belgrade showed it was well disposed towards this Serbian-inspired event, helping it along with receptions at the Canadian embassy and the homes of senior US and British diplomats.

The modest progress made in Belgrade needs to be continued. Interest in western Europe is strong. Professor Micunovic has been bridge-building in Paris and London. Professor Radojkavic, who got his PhD at Leeds, is keen to reactivate links with communications studies departments here. Tempus students want to resume their studies, interrupted by sanctions. Ten thousand people visited a three-day education fair in the British Council library in Belgrade just before the round table. Bristol, Leicester, London External and others were on display and expect to recruit.

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Brian Groombridge is professor emeritus of adult education at the University of London and former head of educational programmes at the Independent Broadcasting Authority.