“novak djokovic comes from serbia, war torn poor country…”

i read 3-4 different news articles about novak djokovic’ climb to the top of atp list and wimbledon win. all articles finished with a statement that serbia is a poor country which recently experienced war.

i fail to see how this is relevant. serbia’s last war was in last millenium, in 1999, and its economic standing is worst than switzerland and japan and better than albania, zimbabwe and maybe even greece at the moment.

great britain, germany and russia have been seriously hurt in last century wars yet it is hardly something needed to be mentioned at every article about their athletes.

manchester united won champions league, yet they come from a country which suffered greatly in word war 2. usa equestrian team won the world title yet usa suffered dot com crash in 90s and has suffered during civil war in 19h century. south africa won rugby world champs, yet it parted with apartheid recently and 40 millions people live in paper houses and go to the toilet in the middle of the street. germany won table tennis tournament yet they had a psychotic mass murderer as chancellor in mid 20th century and have killed 10 million jews, some of their war criminals are still being hunted world wide. mexican gymnast won, although maya have have battled famine and spanish conquistadors. etc etc… you get the point how mixing one thing with some random negative historic facts makes little point.

serbia has had steady growth for 11 years and managed to be a peaceful country in this century so far. only problem serbia has at the moment is that it is joining nato which again means war involvement but not under nationalistic ideology (some ideology is necessary).

i am always impressed by random connections journalists make between geography, history, individuals, events. i think there must be some kind of a journalism randomizer. djokovic is serb, serbia had war in 90s, therefore must mention serbian war. serbia is poorer than uk so this must be stated. sure, 99,9% of the world is poorer than uk, switzerland, usa etc. it is obvious.

mass media makes little sense to me sometimes.