Aleksandar Tijanić (; 13 December 1949 – 28 October 2013) was a Serbian journalist and director of the country's public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia from 2004 to 2013. During his career he was a star columnist for leading newspapers and magazines published in SFR Yugoslavia and Serbia, editor in chief of several prominent television stations, political advisor to prominent Serbian politicians, and Information Minister for four months in 1996 in the government headed by Mirko Marjanović during the rule of Slobodan Milošević. He was very much a polarising figure in Serbian society and gathered a great deal of admirers as well as enemies throughout the years. He died on October 28, 2013 from a heart attack. Early life Tijanić was born in Đakovica, FPR Yugoslavia. After finishing high school in his home town, he moved to Belgrade to study journalism at University of Belgrade's Faculty of Political Sciences. He did not complete his studies. Journalism career After working his way up during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Politika publications such as Auto Svet, he got a sought-after job at NIN magazine, where he first wrote for the supplement on vehicles and eventually advanced to a position on the editorial board. His job in NIN was a springboard for other top editorial positions. In the mid-1980s he was editor-in-chief of Intervju, another weekly magazine from Politika AD family. In parallel, he wrote for periodical publications in Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia. Following the 8th Session of the Serbian Communist League in September 1987, which was essentially the official date of Slobodan Milošević's ascent to power in Serbia, Tijanić lost all of his writing engagements in the Belgrade publications and was thus reduced to mostly writing in Croatian papers. He became particularly well known as a political columnist writing for the Split-based weekly newspaper Nedjeljna Dalmacija, which soon earned him the moniker of "the giant of Croatian journalism". In his column titled En Passant he often expressed views critical of the Yugoslav government and Communism in general - something that his Croatian colleagues, silenced after the collapse of the Croatian Spring, seldom dared to do. His column effectively ended in 1990, following the shift in the newspaper's editorial policy as his column was deemed too critical of the new Croatian vice-president Antun Vrdoljak, although Tijanić was allowed to write one last entry in late March 1991. Simultaneous to his Nedjeljna