Three times Bujar Sadiku put himself forward for the post of commissioner at Kosovo’s Information and Privacy Agency, where he serves as director. Three times the recruitment process collapsed. When it was advertised in April for a fourth time, Sadiku stood aside.
“I have tried three times,” he said.
The post of commissioner is vital to the implementation of laws regulating access to public documents and the protection of data privacy, but it has been vacant since 2019.
The first time it was up for grabs, the competition was scrapped after the British embassy, engaged by the government to improve transparency and keep politics out of public sector recruitment, said that none of the candidates was right for the job. Two subsequent attempts failed when lawmakers were unable to bridge their political differences to endorse a candidate.
And ordinary Kosovars are paying the price. Without a commissioner, Kosovo’s Law on Access to Public Documents and Law on the Protection of Personal Data cannot be implemented, leaving individuals unprotected from violations of their personal data privacy and journalists unable to challenge institutions which refuse to release information of public importance.
“We have an institution that has been unable to function for more than two years,” said Mexhide Demolli, executive director of the NGO FOL Movement.
All eyes on ruling Vetevendosje
Albin Kurti. Photo: BIRN/Urim Krasniqi
With the power to levy fines against offenders, the commissioner should play a key role in improving transparency in the public sector and protecting members of the public against invasions of their data privacy. But experts say the Agency is already under heavy political interference and all parties have an interest in who takes the top job.
Once again, MPs are currently interviewing candidates for the post, before a shortlist is submitted to a parliament vote.
But it will go ahead without the oversight of the British embassy, which pulled out in August last year after the collapse of the last recruitment process.
Flutura Kusari, an expert in media law who has monitored the recruitment process, said it was of great importance that lawmakers select someone with “integrity”.
“The Commissioner should be someone who has courage and who is independent because it is dangerous if this person is controlled by politicians,” Kusari told BIRN.
“Currently, the Agency is under political control; it does not act independently, numerous opinions it has issued violate international standards of freedom of expression.”
“The failure belongs to all political parties because they failed to find consensus,” she said. “But, so far, the blame should be on those parties which held power – PDK [Democratic Party of Kosovo] and LDK [Democratic League of Kosovo]. Now we have to wait and see what Vetevendosje will do,” Kusari said, referring to the current ruling party of Prime Minister Albin Kurti.
Meanwhile, the complaints are stacking up, said Demolli.
“We have many complaints from citizens whose personal data has been violated by different companies sending promotional messages to their phones,” she told BIRN. Without a commissioner, such companies escape sanction.
Illustration. Photo: BIRN/Urim Krasniqi
Journalists frustrated
The situation is also making life difficult for journalists, who have no one to turn to if institutions do not respond to or refuse requests for access to information.
“The most frequent manner in which requests for access to public documents are rejected by institutions is via silence,” said Kastriot Berisha, a member of the Kosovo Press Council, which gathers print and online media in Kosovo, and a journalist with BIRN Kosovo.
“Currently, we address complaints to the People’s Advocate, but he can’t force institutions to provide access to public documents, only facilitate it.”
Sadiku said the delays were damaging the Agency and costing the public.
“Many complaints are pending,” Sadiku told BIRN. “Each day the Agency remains without a commissioner implies delays in addressing the complaints. Many complaints could lose all meaning if they are not addressed in time.”
The Press Council of Kosovo, PCK, and the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, on Wednesday voiced concern over the proposed regulation of online media content under the Law on the Independent Media Commission, IMC, deeming it a violation of “international rules of journalism”.
The IMC is an independent state body that regulates, manages, and oversees TV broadcasting in Kosovo but now it has said it wants video production on local websites added to its jurisdiction. Print media are already monitored by the PCK.
The PCK is a self-regulatory body formed by the print media in Kosovo, which is recognized by the Assembly of Kosovo through the Law on Defamation and Insult. Rulings that the PCK issues for parties and the media are “respected and valued by local courts in cases where they decide for defamation and insult”.
“Each of the media should be held accountable for their actions before state bodies, based on relevant laws, but initially no one can better assess their ethics than the media themselves, or professionals of the field,” the PCK and AJK said in a joint press release.
The reaction comes after the IMC head, Xhevat Latifi, said a new law on the IMC should include audio-visual content of websites within its auspices.
Latifi said this at a presentation of the IMC’s Annual Report for 2020 to parliament’s Committee on Local Government, Regional Development and Media on Tuesday. “We are witnessing a toxic state of media vocabulary in Kosovo,” Latifi said, justifying the initiative.
Later he told BIRN that the initiative was not his own and explained it as “concern of society”.
“I have stated that portals which deal with audio-visual production would best be included in the new law; not all portals, only these which deal with audio-visual parts. It is only a request. We are only measuring the public, their concerns. I have presented it as a concern of society, we cannot say this is my opinion or IMC position,” he said.
The Press Council and journalists’ associations deem the idea dangerous.
“Initiatives to control and evaluate ethics for print and online media by a state organisation are harmful and do not help the media and journalists,” their press release said.
Human rights and media freedom groups have sharply criticised a decision by a judge, Iliriana Olldashi, at Albania’s Special Court Against Corruption and Organised Crime, SPAK, to approve a prosecutorial request made last Sunday to seize any computer, mobile phone or other electronic equipment belonging to the online publication Lapsi.al.
Experts and rights organisations called it a blatant attempt to intimidate journalists in breach of their human rights and the principles of the European Court of Human Rights, ECHR.
Prosecutors launched an investigation after Lapsi.al revealed the existence of a massive database purportedly belonging to the ruling Socialist Party containing information on each voter, including background, voting history, family links or employment status.
Prosecutors ordered Lapsi.al to hand over the database but the editors refused, saying that could expose their source or sources.
“The intervention of the prosecutors and the court against Lapsi.al’s right to report on a matter of public interest is just another attempt by those in power to intimidate the media,” Flutura Kusari, a legal advisor at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, told BIRN.
“Instead of investigating the breach of privacy by the Socialist Party, they are attempting to intimidate journalists and their sources,” Kusari added, saying that the decision contravenes the standards of the ECHR.
Dorjan Matlija, a human rights lawyer in Tirana, told BIRN that the court decision was based on flawed reasoning.
“The prosecutors have other possibilities to investigate the matter based on the accusations of the opposition Democratic Party against Prime Minister [Edi Rama] and other officials,” Matlija said.
He added that before approving such a request, the court should have considered the need to protect the sources, an obligation deriving from several decisions of the ECHR.
In the latest such decision, published this month, Sedletska vs Ukraine, the ECHR ruled that an order to expose a source may only be issued after all other ways to investigate a matter have been exhausted.
Matlija added that the judge’s unexpected order creates ground for further violations of media freedom and could expose more than one source of information. “The order practically could end up shutting down the media outlet [Lapsi] by seizing all its equipment,” he added.
Andi Bushati, co-owner of Lapsi, told BIRN that prosecutors had not yet acted on the court order, and that in the meantime he had appealed the decision.
He said the prosecutors seem more eager to identify their source than interview Socialist Party officials over the database. “They seem more concerned in finding out who betrayed the party and not who stole the personal data,” he said.
Kusari, from ECPMF, told BIRN that they were informing Albania’s international partners about this and related issues. “We hope that international pressure will help halt the pressure against the media,” she said.
BIRN is advertising three positions, offering exciting opportunities to get involved in this unique new initiative.
Under the working name ‘Reporters’ House’, the museum and community space will be the first regional museum in the Balkans that tells the comprehensive story of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the wars that erupted as the unified state collapsed.
The museum space will offer a compelling, fact-based narrative but will not simply serve as a heritage venue of wartime history. We aim to create a contemporary, inviting, creative, inspiring and memorable place providing space for discussion, learning and growth.
We want to celebrate the journalists, photographers and media workers who courageously reported the war and its aftermath, exposing atrocities and serious human rights abuses while maintaining the highest professional standards despite the deadly risks they faced.
We want to highlight the untold or forgotten stories of solidarity, bravery and humanity in times of war, and to preserve the memory of the journalists who lost their lives in the Yugoslav wars. We also want to remember the darker moments for our profession, looking at how media were used for propaganda purposes, instigating hatred and division.
Many of the challenges that journalists faced during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia have enduring lessons for media coverage of wars. At the same time, contemporary journalism faces issues of propaganda and disinformation that have been amplified by the online environment and social media.
This is why we also want Reporters’ House to serve as a community space for journalists to gather and discuss the critical issues facing the societies of South-East and Central Europe, exchanging ideas with experts from outside the region about the development of quality journalism and investigative reporting and the role of media in conflict and conflict prevention.
The space is located in Sarajevo, and will be renovated ahead of the planned opening in Spring 2022.
The opening date is symbolic as it will mark 30 years since the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which saw the largest number of media workers killed in Europe since World War II.
Sarajevo is also home to the regional office of BIRN, the first structured network of journalists from the former Yugoslavia who got together to report about the key issues that countries in the region were facing in the wake of the wars that accompanied the break-up of the country in which they were born.
The opening of the ‘Reporters’ House’ will also serve to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our regional Balkan Transitional Justice programme, a platform that ensures a regular, up-to-date flow of information about transitional justice issues in the region through our dedicated network of correspondents in all the countries of the former Yugoslavia and our contributors from other media outlets, civil society organisations, governmental institutions, academia, the cultural sphere and elsewhere.
Over the past ten years, we have reported from all the war crime trials that have been held domestically and internationally, we have revealed human rights abuses and help to locate war crimes suspects, and we have inspired and supported other journalists to report and collaborate on reporting projects about conflict-related topics.
We have also brought together various different interest groups to exchange views on transitional justice policies, and most importantly we have given a voice to thousands of war victims to tell their stories and demand justice. With the Reporters’ House in Sarajevo, we intend to take this work to another level and ensure that the issues and debates raised by the Yugoslav wars have a positive impact on the region’s future development.
When a group of Slovenian researchers, rights advocates and investigative journalists teamed up last year to probe the activities of 27 suspicious Twitter accounts, one of them registered to Jordana Caric, ‘Joca’.
Caric, it turned out, was particularly popular with Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, known to his critics as Marshall Twito, a nod to Josip Broz Tito, the man who ran socialist Yugoslavia for 35 years, and to Jansa’s fondness for Twitter as a means of conveying government policy and denouncing his opponents.
According to the study conducted by the institute ‘Danes je nov dan’ [Today is a New Day] and the investigative outlet ‘Pod crto’ [The Bottom Line], the “vast majority” of Caric’s Twitter posts were in praise of Jansa’s right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, and scornful of its critics.
Between January and November last year, Jansa shared Caric’s tweets 30 times, despite the fact that, according to Danes je nov dan and Pod crto, Caric’s profile picture was lifted from a Brazilian Facebook user and the account, like the other 26, is almost certainly fake.
That the fake Caric account should enjoy such high-profile retweets is indicative of what Tadej Strok of Danes je nov dan says is the prevalence of so-called ‘astroturfing’ in Slovenia, a deceptive practice designed to create the impression of widespread grassroots support for, in this case, the SDS and the unpopularity of its opponents.
The 27 Twitter accounts – each of which used a stolen or computer-generated profile picture – “were involved in very extensive propaganda,” Strok told BIRN, “only promoting and publishing content that ideologically links to the ruling party.”
“Let’s say that the fake profile tweets something, a public figure retweets that without any critical distance… and then it is suddenly more important news and maybe it’s going to get reposted” in SDS-affiliated media.
Jansa might use the disclaimer ‘retweets are not endorsements’, but politicians like him “use fake profiles as a proxy,” said Strok, “to spread information or words that they know would put them in more trouble if they tweeted it themselves.”
“He retweets more than 100 tweets a day,” Strok said. “Of course they’re endorsements.”
Trump tactics
A mobile phone displays the suspended status of the Twitter account of former US President Donald J. Trump. Photo: EPA-EFE/MICHAEL REYNOLDS.
Marko Milosavljevic, a professor of journalism and media policy at the University of Ljubljana, says that, in a way, “Twitter has become the Official Gazette in Slovenia.”
The social media platform, used by roughly 100,000 of Slovenia’s two million people, shows “what the prime minister thinks, what he will do and what moves he will make, who are his enemies, what is his attitude towards different political actors,” Milosavljevic told BIRN.
And Jansa takes no prisoners.
In mid-March, five international media watchdogs wrote to the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, to warn of what they called Jansa’s “Trumpian style tactics” of attacking journalists on Twitter and dismissing critical reporting as “fake news”.
Sixty-two year-old Jansa, a fixture on the Slovenian political scene since independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, is currently involved in a defamation case stemming from a tweet he posted in 2016 calling two public television journalists “washed-up prostitutes”. He was given a three-month suspended prison sentence in November 2018 but a higher court ordered a retrial in 2019, which is ongoing.
Political analysts, public figures, protesters and those who challenge the government’s COVID-19 measures often find themselves the target of smear campaigns. And Jansa’s party colleagues get involved too, often with the help of fake profiles.
Danes je nov dan and Pod crto rolled out their findings in February and March this year. But it was only on February 22, when an SDS lawmaker called Alenka Jeraj inadvertently revealed her use of a fake Twitter account, that ‘astroturfing’ really hit the headlines in Slovenia.
Due to the word-limit on Twitter, Jeraj posted a comment in two parts, but posted the first under a fake account under the name ‘Kopriva’ and only the second part under her own name. Jeraj confirmed she had created the account and subsequently closed it.
It was the Kopriva scandal that prompted other media to report on the issue, said Anze Voh Bostic, an investigative journalist at Pod crto. Then came the attacks.
“What we analysed then happened to us,” Voh Bostic told BIRN. “First, attacks on Twitter, then an article in their media and then a few more tweets. It lasted maybe a week.”
Making hate speech acceptable
A street “exhibition” of PM Janez Jansa’s tweets entitled “Fits and Delusions of Marshal Twito”, launched by the Slovenian anti-govt protest movement in November, Ljubljana. Photo: Protestna ljudska skupscina.
Besides the 27 accounts deemed fake, Strok, Voh Bostic and their colleagues had also looked at online attacks against seven prominent individuals who had spoken out against Jansa’s government or his party.
They tracked down 307 accounts that participated in at least one of the attacks via tweet or retweet. Some of the accounts were most likely fake, while others belonged to senior members of the SDS, including Jansa. All of them followed at least six of the 27 fake accounts.
Such communication, from such prominent public figures, contributes to the normalisation of hate speech, said Voh Bostic, citing the example of the January 6 attack on the US Congress by supporters of then US President Donald Trump.
“In a way, Twitter is also to blame for the attack on Congress,” said Voh Bostic. “It gives some legitimacy to this kind of speech, that it’s normal.”
Voh Bostic said that one target of the attacks told him he had been harassed on the street.
“He was walking down the street and a couple of times they spat in his face,” he said. “It’s just a step away from being beaten.”
Voh Bostic said that, while the SDS, was the focus of their study, “it doesn’t mean that other parties do not use such practices”. But the ruling party is most visible and most aggressive.
According to Milosavljevic, the use of fake profiles cannot be attributed to a few over-enthusiastic party footsoldiers, but is “a systematic relationship in which many people are also paid” – the kind of system BIRN has reported previously on in Serbia.
An SDS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The government’s communications office, UKOM, told BIRN that via social media it “highlights and draws attention to the problem of hate speech, distinguishing between hate speech and offensive and critical speech.”
It noted what it said were “calls for death” made during anti-government protests in 2020. Some protesters adopted the slogan ‘Smrt Jansizmu’, or Death to Jansism, a play on the Yugoslav Partisan motto ‘Smrt fasizmu, sloboda narodu’, meaning Death to fascism, freedom to the people. Critics of the government say the slogan calls for the death of Jansa’s politics, not of the man.
Alone with their phones
Slovenian Prime Minister and leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, Janez Jansa. Photo: EPA-EFE/Szilard Koszticsak HUNGARY OUT
In March, Interior Minister Ales Hojs, a member of the co-ruling New Slovenia, NSi, dodged a question on public television about why politicians use fake Twitter profiles. Instead, he complained that the government is not given enough airtime on traditional media, particularly Radio-Television Slovenia.
“The fact is that the right side of the political scene has to use social media to attract people,” Hojs said.
Milosavljevic, however, said that, while politicians try to “behave nicely” in media appearances and press conference, they feel much more freedom on social networks.
“On Twitter, they are alone with their phones and then they write what first comes to their mind, even if it is very aggressive, vulgar, offensive,” he said. As Trump demonstrated, aggressive communication garners more attention on both Twitter and within society, and so “can be effective in that regard,” Milosavljevic told BIRN.
“Unfortunately, it’s also effective in dividing that society.”
Facebook removed more than 300 Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to members of an Iranian dissident group based in Albania that had been targeting Iran and content related to Iran.
“The network violated our policy against foreign interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign entity,” the social media giant said in its March report, “Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report”, which it published on Tuesday.
According to the report, the network now taken down was very active in 2017 and in the second half of 2020.
“The people behind this activity relied on a combination of authentic and fake accounts to post MEK-related content and comment on their own and other people’s posts, including those of international news organizations like Radio Liberty, Voice of America and BBC,” said the report.
Facebook added that it will continue to monitor any attempts to re-establish the network by people behind this campaign.
“The operation relied heavily on fake accounts to post and amplify its messages. Some of these accounts went through repeated name changes. Other accounts used the names of deceased members of MEK. Some claimed to be located in Iran but were operated from Albania. All the accounts were overt in their support of MEK and their criticism of the Iranian government,” the report continued.
Some of the fake accounts were a decade old but most of them were created between 2014 and 2016. They were particularly active in 2017, reduced activity in 2018–2019 and resumed in 2020.
The Croatian public broadcaster, HRT, confirmed on Tuesday that it had again sacked Hrvoje Zovko, a veteran reporter and president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, for violent behaviour in the workplace. Zovko did not receive an official notice terminating his employment.
“At this stage, we do not know what is written [in the termination notice]. He only received information about the decision from a journalist who called him and said he had been fired and asked for a statement,” his lawyer, Vanja Juric, told BIRN.
It was “quite clear that this is a continuation of [HRT’s] abuse against him that has been going on since 2018,” Juric continued.
HRT told HINA press agency that it had initiated dismissal procedures following “an anonymous report stating the inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour of Hrvoje Zovko towards one worker, a [woman] journalist, at work”.
Zovko on Tuesday denied all wrongdoing: “History repeats itself, not only through the fact that I continue to be abused by the same false accusations as three years ago but also in the fact that, like last time, the whole public was informed of my dismissal before I was.”
HRT sacked Zovko as a journalist and editor in September 2018, citing a “series of insults, misconduct, extremely inappropriate and unprofessional statements”.
It was referring to a quarrel between him and Katarina Perisa Cakarun, editor of HRT’s Information Media Service, which erupted after Zovko announced he would resign as executive editor of the HRT4 channel.
HND said then that it was convinced that the procedure and HRT’s decision would not have happened had Zovko not been the HND President.
Zovko had annoyed his bosses by speaking out about the state of media freedom in Croatia and alleging censorship at HRT. The broadcaster later sued Zovko for damages, seeking 33,300 euros in compensation.
HRT told BIRN on that occasion that it had to seek legal redress because Zovko and others “untruthfully claimed that there is censorship within HRT, though they know that none exists”.
After Zovko initiated a procedure against HRT following his 2018 dismissal, the Zagreb Municipal Labour Court ruled in 2019 that Zovko had been fired unlawfully. In August last year, the Rijeka County Court has upheld the 2019 ruling. In November last year, a court threw out a lawsuit ordering HRT to compensate Zovko for litigation costs of 2,580 euros.
Zovko returned to television after the court ruling, but now HRT has initiated a new procedure against him with similar accusations.
The Ministry of Culture and Media, commenting on his dismissal, said it condemned all forms of violence and abuse and advocated clearer procedures and equal treatment in all cases of suspected violence while adding that everyone must have the right to present a defence.
Zovko insists the accusations are untrue and that “from the behaviour of HRT, it is clear that it is not about the violations of my employment obligations, but about their desire for revenge”.
In January, the weekly Nacional published a story about the alleged sexual harassment of a journalist by the HRT Business Director – but HRT said it had checked the claims and “established that the allegations were unfounded”.
Both the HND and the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, SNH, have said such investigations should be more serious. The SNH president and an HRT reporter, Maja Sever, said they had asked HRT to establish an anonymous reporting system that protects the victim – but the call was rejected.
The Stockholm-based international human rights organisation, Civil Rights Defenders, has condemned what it called “the shameless campaign of the Serbian pro-government tabloid media” against a Serbian investigative media portal, Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, KRIK.
The rights organisation – and independent Serbian media unions – reacted after Pink TV and two pro-government tabloids, Kurir and Alo, published closely coordinated stories linking KRIK to a notorious underworld gangster, Veljko Belivuk.
Belivuk is a leader of a criminal and hooligan group once called the “Janjicari” (“Janissaries”) many of whose members were recently arrested on suspicion of murder, extortion, kidnapping and drug dealing.
Allegations about KRIK’s connections with members of the gang were first published by the pro-government TV station Pink on Tuesday evening.
The next day, Kurir published photos of KRIK editor Stevan Dojcinovic alongside those of Belivuk on its front page with the headline, “Secret deal between KRIK and Belivuk”. Alo then published the same story with a front-page headline reading, “KRIK – Belivuk’s private media!”
In reality, for some years KRIK and some other independent investigative media were the only ones in Serbia to publish stories on the gang and its ties with the Serbian government and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
The gang’s connections to state officials, including a former high-ranking police official and the current general secretary of the Progressive-led government, are well-documented.
Some members of the group formed part of the security detail at President Aleksandar Vucic’s inauguration in 2017, where they were caught on camera manhandling journalists.
However, after the arrest of Belivuk’s group in February this year, pro-government tabloids started publishing hostile stories about the Janjicari along with material leaked from the police investigation.
Zeljko Bodrozic, president of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, NUNS, said on Wednesday that the pro-government media had “initiated a very dangerous action of connecting independent and professional journalists with the criminal group of Veljko Belivuk in order to remove responsibility from state officials for the emergence, strengthening and atrocities of this and other criminal groups.”
“The reports of Pink TV and regime tabloids about connections between KRIK and Belivuk are meaningless constructions, and no one who follows the public scene and the work of the KRIK editorial office can believe these untruths.
“But the big problem is that only a large number of citizens have access to the media that spread and spread these heinous lies, which is why the safety of our brave colleagues who have been writing about corruption and crime for years is now dangerously endangered,” Bodrozic added.
KRIK is a non-profit organisation founded by a team of journalists who for years have been engaged in exposing crime and corruption and have received many awards for their work. It is part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, an international non-profit organisation that is a consortium of investigative centers and independent media in 20 countries around the world.
Given the low rates of pay, long hours and stress, journalism was never the most coveted career in the Balkans. But now a survey of media workers in the region shows that COVID-19 has made their working lives a whole lot worse.
By the nature of the job, most journalists can ill-afford to stay at home. At work, however, they face a constant balancing act between getting the story and protecting their health and the health of their loved ones.
While many aspects of life have slowed to a halt, the news cycle has not, but now journalists face the unenviable task of getting to grips with the complexity of the pandemic and explaining it to their viewers or readers, while weeding out fake news and conspiracy theories.
The line between work hours and personal time has become increasingly blurred, exposing journalists to mental health issues the scale of which experts say has still to be fully understood.
And on top of all that, governments and state bodies across the Balkans have restricted the flow of information to the media, making it increasingly hard for journalists to do their jobs.
“Depression could emerge as a concern later on,” said Gentiana Begolli Pustina, head of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK.
“Right now journalists have other existential problems. They go to work and worry they might lose their job. They have no time to think about depression or stress. We will feel the consequences at a later stage.”
Albanian journalists and cameramen reporting about the COVID-19 pandemic in Tirana, on March 30, 2020. Photo: LSA
Finances, workload, mental health and access to information
Between mid-April and mid-May last year, BIRN surveyed media workers in Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia, asking them how the COVID-19 pandemic had changed their work and lives with a focus on financial problems, workload, mental health issues and cooperation with public officials.
Among the findings were:
– A majority of media workers fear for their living standards, with almost two-thirds ranking financial support as a serious need.
– More than 60 per cent on average said that they had ‘more’ or ‘much more’ work than usual. The rate reached 73 per cent in Bosnia and 70 per cent in Serbia.
– More than 55 per cent said that they are losing income due to the pandemic. The situation was worst in North Macedonia.
– More than 58 per cent said reporting on COVID-19 had affected their mental health.
– Most journalists said had the support of their employers when it comes to paid sick leave and adequate protective equipment.
– Roughly 40 per cent said the rate at which public officials failed to answer their question had risen during the pandemic.
– Officials in Serbia are the most restrictive when it comes to answering media questions, with more than half of respondents saying they rarely get answers. At the other end of the scale, 44.5 per cent of respondents in North Macedonia said they often received answers.
– The pandemic has not changed their communication habits. Journalists in the region still predominantly use phone and email, followed by Viber and WhatsApp. Almost 14 per cent said they use Signal, which is considered more secure.
Members of the media capture the arrival of state officials for the Enthronement ceremony for Patriarch Porfirije in Belgrade, Serbia, 19 February 2021. EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC
Lost earnings, lost jobs
Living standards have long been a concern for journalists in the Balkans, since well before the pandemic.
On average, journalists in Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia earn less than the average wage in those countries, according to a study conducted in 2020 by the Association of Journalists of Serbia, UNS.
In the BIRN survey, 58 per cent of respondents ranked financial support as their chief need during the pandemic. For those in North Macedonia, the figure rose to 70 per cent, and in Bosnia almost 67 per cent.
More than 55 per cent of all respondents said that they are losing income due to the pandemic. By country, the highest rate – almost 82 per cent – was in North Macedonia, followed by Albania with almost 64 per cent. Some 37 per cent in Serbia said they were losing money.
Journalist associations have fought to at least save jobs.
“We managed to agree with the government a financial injection so that it can cover the expenses for the journalists’ pension and medical insurance, which was put into effect,” said Macedonian journalist Darko Duridanski of the Independent Union of Journalists and Media Workers, SSNM.
“The government has also helped the media outlets financially so we believe that this was a big reason why we did not see massive loss of jobs and other negative financial repercussions,” he told BIRN.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
Most at risk are video journalists, who are less in demand given the rise in online communication and virtual press conferences.
In Serbia, there have been job losses, most notably at the local public broadcaster in the northern province of Vojvodina, where more than 100 people were laid off between October 2020 and January 2021, most of them on unsecure contracts hired via agencies. RTV Vojvodina saw its budget cut 1.7 million euros by the state in 2020.
“Those people worked the most in the field and risked their health,” said Darko Sper, the RTV Vojvodina union representative of the Nezavisnost [Independence] trade union. “The director even praised them, but it was not enough,” he told BIRN.
Sper said working conditions for journalists had deteriorated “since they are constantly on the front line. They are going in the field to report, from the COVID-19 facilities, doing live pieces on the street or having guests every day in the studio.”
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
More work for same, or less, money
According to the survey, workloads are up, with an average of more than 60 per cent saying they had more to do since the onset of the pandemic.
In Bosnia, 73 per cent of those surveyed said their workload had increased, followed by 70 per cent in Serbia.
“We worked three times more for the same or less money,” one journalist in Bosnia said in the survey, in which respondents submitted answers anonymously.
But the work is being done with the same resources.
“In addition to business challenges in the midst of the coming economic crisis as a result of the epidemic, the biggest problem in production itself was limited human resources relative to the intensity of production, which was significantly higher, and the amount of knowledge related to public health topics,” a Montenegrin media director said.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
On the positive side, a majority of respondents were satisfied with how their employers handled protective equipment requirements or paid sick leave. A third said they were largely left to fend for themselves.
In total, 70 per cent said their employers provided protective equipment and almost 68 per cent said they were granted paid sick leave when they had to self-isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
Information even harder to come by
In terms of day-to-day work, the pandemic has limited opportunities for journalists to meet their sources in person and made it increasingly difficult to get information out of public officials.
Across the Balkans, efforts to investigate huge public spending to combat the novel coronavirus, often outside of normal public procurement procedures, have been stymied.
“The opportunity to meet personally with my sources because of the movement restrictions and difficulty in obtaining information from institutions, which do not hold press conferences, were among the biggest problems,” said a journalist from Albania.
Of those surveyed, 51 per cent said it was ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain permission to report during curfews imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus. But in Serbia, 31 per cent said it was “difficult’ or ‘very difficult’, twice the average rate in the region.
Serbian journalists also encountered the most difficulty when it came to obtaining information from authorities. Roughly 53 per cent of those surveyed in Serbia said they rarely received replies from official sources to questions concerning COVID-19.
Of all respondents, some 40 per cent said that the number of questions that went unanswered had risen since the start of the pandemic.
Illustration. Igor Vujcic
In Serbia, the government formally sought to limit access to information via a decree issued on March 31 barring anyone outside the government and the COVID-19 Crisis Staff from providing media with information on the pandemic. The move triggered much criticism and the decree was rescinded.
Sper from RTV Vojvodina accused authorities in Serbia of exploiting the pandemic to limit scrutiny of unrelated issues, citing COVID-19 restrictions. But when it came to the country’s June 2020 election, which the ruling Progressive Party won in a landslide, those restrictions were lifted.
“When they needed elections, corona was not a problem,” Sper told BIRN. It was, however, when journalists and the public wanted to attend, for example, a debate on the ecological impact of Chinese [tire manufacturer] Ling Long in the [Serbian] city of Zrenjanin.
”Stress is nothing new to journalists, but the findings of the BIRN survey suggest mental health issues are piling up.
In total, almost 58 per cent said reporting on COVID-19 had affected their mental health. In Albania, the figure rose to 73 per cent. Journalists in Montenegro appear to be faring better, with 29 per cent saying they faced some mental health issues.
In research published in July by the Independent Union of Journalists and Media Workers, SSNM, in North Macedonia, 62 per cent of respondents said the crisis had badly affected their mental health, while 48 per cent said they needed professional psychological support.
In Kosovo, still finding its feet as an independent state since splitting from Serbia in 2008, journalists have had to grapple with a long-running political crisis on top of COVID-19.
This has left journalists in the young country with little time to think about their mental wellbeing.
“We are waiting for a third government to be formed since the pandemic started a year ago,” said Begolli Pustina of the AJK. “While journalists from all over the world have focussed on reporting only on the pandemic, our Kosovo colleagues have been forced to focus more on the constant political crises,” she told BIRN, adding that the scale of mental health issues facing journalists might only become clear later.
Stress is nothing new to journalists, but the findings of the BIRN survey suggest mental health issues are piling up. Photo: Sergey Zolkin/unsplash.com
Will journalism bounce back?
BIRN also asked the journalists surveyed about how they and their employers have dealt with the scourge of misinformation during the pandemic, as well as how they have communicated with sources and obtained information.
According to the responses, only 34 per cent of newsrooms use a specific tool to fight disinformation or verify information.
In Albania, for example, a study by the Albanian Media Council and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung – ‘Media and information of the citizens in times of Corona’ – found that standards had dropped.
“The monitoring shows that Albanian media have regressed in the professional standards of news reporting,” the report stated. “To a large extent, the news produced in the Albanian media has been with unbalanced sources, unverified and, as a consequence, biased. It relied mainly on the statements of institutional and state actors, and for the most part the statements of these actors were considered news.”
The study noted a lack of investigative journalism during the pandemic.
In terms of security precautions, only 13.7 per cent of respondents in the BIRN survey reported using Signal – which is considered more secure – to communicate with sources. Most journalists rely on phone and email, followed by Viber and WhatsApp.
A large majority of the respondents – 68.7 per cent – said they believed the media landscape in their countries would be changed after the pandemic passes. That figure rose to 86 per cent in Albania, but dropped to 59 per cent in Montenegro.
Mila Radulovic of the Association of Professional Journalists of Montenegro, DPNCG, cautioned that many of the problems, while worse since the onset of the pandemic, had long been issues facing journalists in the Balkans.
“There is a great danger that due to the economic crisis, which is the consequence of the pandemic, a large number of colleagues will lose their jobs,” Radulovic told BIRN.
She lamented the working conditions in “most newsrooms”, but added: “We have been talking about it for years.”
Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors, regulates and sanctions radio and television broadcasts, has blocked the launch of a critical TV station for more than a year.
Sozcu, one of Turkey’s most read daily newspapers, bought the local TV station over a year ago and made all the preparations necessary for the start of nationwide broadcasting.
But RTUK has stopped the launch of Sozcu TV in its tracks, by not accepting its application for a change of logo, Sozcu said on Thursday.
“Sozcu TV bought SRT TV channel from Mega Agency and Advertisement Company on February 21, 2020, which was broadcasting nationwide with the central satellite system in Sivas. However, the RTUK has unconstitutionally not put Sozcu TV’s application for a logo change on its agenda,” Sozcu explained.
Sozcu said that it first applied for a logo change on February 27 2020. “Sozcu applied to change the TV channel’s logo from ‘Sivas SRT’ to ‘SZC’ but the RTUK did not answer. After we at Sozcu daily newspaper made this public … RTUK overruled the application and fined Sozcu, saying Sivas SRT’s logo was being misused as ‘SRT Sivas,’” Sozcu added.
Since then, Sozcu says it has applied four more times to RTUK, which has still not given an answer. The RTUK is constitutionally obliged to answer such applications from between eight to 10 days.
Observers say that, in recent years, RTUK has become a tool of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to put pressure on remaining independent media in the country.
A recent report from the Journalists’ Association of Turkey said that between July and September 2020 alone, RTUK issued 90 penalties against independent media outlets, including halts to broadcasting and administrative fines.
On February 10, RTUK again fined KRT TV, Fox TV, Halk TV and Tele 1, all of which are seen as critical of the authorities for different reasons.
While the Turkish government, via RTUK, stops the launch of more unwelcome critical TV stations, existing TV stations have suffered from increased political pressure.
Olay TV, which hired many well-known senior journalists after a Turkish businessman bought the channel last summer, was closed down in December 2020, only two months after its launch.
The owner said the station had been unable to withstand the political pressure, and its editors had failed to find a new owner.
The Human Rights Watchdog Freedom House listed Turkey as not free in 2020. The World Press Freedom Index, of another watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, ranks Turkey in 154th place among 180 countries in terms of press freedom.
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