Giorgos Karaivaz was returning to his home in the southern Athens suburb of Alimos after work when, according to the authorities, he was shot by two persons wearing dark clothes and riding a light motorcycle.
The perpetrators are believed to have used a silencer, as the shots were not heard by nearby residents. The attack took place around 2.30pm and, according to police reports, 17 to 20 bullet casings have been found on the spot.
Karaivaz, a veteran reporter, specialized in the police and crime beat, appearing daily on a show on Star TV. He was also the founder and owner of bloko.gr, a website that focused on issues related to law enforcement authorities.
After the news of his death broke, his colleagues at bloko.gr wrote a post titled “Grief”.
“Giorgos Karaivaz, the founder and owner of bloko.gr, is not with us anymore. Some people decided to close his mouth and make him stop writing his texts, with bullets. They executed him in front of his house. For we, who in the last years worked with him, who were guided by him in difficult moments, drinking wine together, honoured by his friendship, these are very difficult times,” the post said.
The board of the journalists’ union expressed “deep sadness for the loss of their colleague” and called on the government and the authorities to “solve the crime immediately and deliver the perpetrators to justice”.
The union added that “journalists won’t be discouraged by murders, injuries and threats”, and said that they will continue to defend the freedom of the press and journalists’ work against pressures, threats and mafia-like practices and criminal plans.
He had lately covered a number of issues, including the arrest of Dimitris Lignadis, the former artistic director of the National Theatre; evaluations of police officials; and the strong police guard assigned to Menios Fourthiotis, a TV presenter, which was later withdrawn after harsh criticism.
The last time a journalist was shot dead in Greece was in July 2010, when Socrates Gkiolias was shot dead outside his house, after being shot 15 times.
Turkey’s Council of State, the highest administrative legal authority in the country, ruled on Thursday that stricter regulations on the issuing of press cards, introduced in 2018, contravene the freedom of the media.
The Council of State said that press cards cannot be cancelled for what it described as arbitrary and ambiguous reasons such as “conduct against public order or national security” and “behaviour that damages the professional dignity of journalism”.
“The criteria with regards to people who will be given a press card need to be put forward concretely; objective criteria need to be determined,” it added.
The regulations created by Turkey’s Communications Directorate, which is under the control of the presidency, allowed the government to cancel the press cards of journalists seen as unfriendly to the authorities, critics claimed.
Since they were introduced, a large number of independent journalists have had their press cards cancelled or their applications for renewal denied.
Independent media and experts have claimed that being granted press card and the benefits that it bestows has become a privilege of a small group of pro-government journalists. Benefits of a press card include early retirement, entrance to any event, free travel transportation within the city, and discounts on rail and air travel.
The Progressive Journalists’ Union, CGD, welcomed the court’s decision to overturn the regulations, which it said were “created by the government in order to punish journalists who are not close to it”.
Montenegro’s Interior Ministry on Wednesday called for stricter penalties for attacks on journalists, promising to consider granting them the same status as state officials. Interior Ministry Secretary Zoran Miljanic said authorities would meanwhile investigate the motives behind the recent attack on the weekly Monitor’s editor-in-chief, Esad Kocan.
“The motive for the attack will be determined, but penalties for attacking journalists must also be stricter. The ministry will consider all possibilities about whether journalists should get the status of officials,” Miljanic told a press conference after a session of the Commission for Monitoring Violence against Media.
Kocan was attacked on March 28 in front of his house when Dragutin Sukovic, from Podgorica, first verbally insulted him and then tried to use force. Sukovic has been detained on suspicion of endangering security, while police reported that he has been arrested several times since 2010 for attempted murder, drug dealing, domestic violence and assault on police officers.
Commission head Mihailo Jovovic urged the ministry to resolve the motive of this attack, “whether someone attacked Kocan as a journalist, someone sent him [the attacker] there, or it was an attack by an incurable man. If it is revealed that someone sent him, it would be the first time that the preparator of an attack on a journalist was discovered,” he told the press conference.
On March 29, civic activists, media organisations and political parties called again on the authorities to protect the safety of journalists and saying they should be given the status of officials. The Ministry of Public Administration, Digital Society and Media announced a consultation on this idea.
“It [official status] should be granted … to introduce a stricter sanctions policy, which will have a deterrent effect,” the Southeast European Media Association said in a press release.
Under the criminal code, endangering someone’s security incurs a potential fine or a one-year prison sentence. But endangering the security of officials carries a prison sentence of up to three years.
On March 20, television Vijesti journalist Sead Sadikovic was threatened and then assaulted by a group of five or six people carrying Montenegrin flags during a so-called patriotic rally in the town of Bijelo Polje.
Police detained Nermin Omerovic and Edin Dizdarevic for the attack, while authorities condemned it, stating that “violence is not a sign of recognition of a European and cultural Montenegro”.
In its 2020 progress report, the European Commission warned that progress in addressing violence against journalists and media in the country had been limited, adding that the authorities should investigate attacks against journalists as a priority.
“Authorities are expected to demonstrate zero tolerance for threats or attacks against the media, and should refrain from making statements that are not conducive to freedom of expression,” the report said.
On March 30, the US State Department’s latest human rights report warned that unsolved attacks against journalists remained a significant problem in Montenegro. It said more than two-thirds of the 85 attacks recorded on journalists since 2004 remained unsolved or did not result in sentences.
“Harassment of journalists, including use of physical force, was further reported in the course of 2020. Observers also noted that most of the attacks targeted independent or pro-opposition journalists and media professionals,” the report said.
News that the Croatian branch of N1 TV could go off air within days has angered viewers, media unions and democracy watchdogs – especially as screens will go blank at a politically sensitive time, in the run-up to local elections.
“12 days until shutdown on A1,” TV screens of the Croatian branch of the television station, which is CNN’s news channel affiliate in the region, read on Wednesday.
N1 started counting the days when viewers using the services of the A1 cable television provider in Croatia can watch N1 and Sport Klub – produced by United Media company – after the two companies failed to reach an agreement on extending cooperation.
United Group is the biggest alternative telecommunications provider in the region, mainly operating in telecommunications platforms and the media.
Some angry users of the A1 TV platform have announced that they are cancelling their contracts. “Let’s say it’s a good time to cancel the contract and look for another operator. So long A1,” one Twitter user posted on Tuesday.
The Croatian Journalists Association, the Croatian Journalists Union and the democracy watchdog GONG have all voiced deep disappointment, raising concerns that taking N1 TV off air is especially damaging in the run-up to the May local elections.
GONG said that N1 “offers real-time reporting covering all the important events, and their cameras are always where something important is happening”.
It added that N1 “has de facto taken over the role of a public service in terms of news programming”, and that since the local election campaign has already begun, shutting it down now “represents a form of pressure and silencing of a media that ask questions, analyses, and works in the public interest”.
A1, the Croatian mobile network operator, which is part of the Telekom Austria Group, claims United Media demanded unacceptable conditions to continue carrying its channels
“By accepting such conditions, the provision of TV services to our customers would no longer be possible under equally affordable conditions,” A1 stated.
It added that “channels with the most-watched news contents”, such as Croatia’s public television, HRT, and other private televisions, will continue to air on its platform.
But United Media claims it offered A1 the right to continue distributing its channels under the same conditions as before.
Croatia’s Culture and Media Ministry on Tuesday dismissed claims that politics had influenced A1’s decision ahead of the local elections, calling the suggestion “ill-intentioned”.
The ministry insisted the government “knows nothing” about the business relationship between two privately-owned companies.
However, in response to the ministry, Tihomir Ladisic, N1 TV’s news and program director, said the government was responsible for the overall situation “because it has not changed the Law on Electronic Media for years, which would have created the free-market conditions that exist in all countries of the European Union”.
N1 recalled that Croatia is the only EU country in which telecom operators, instead of the free market, set conditions and prices, “ultimately creating media conditions in which they can eliminate and shut down free and independent channels”.
Launched in October 2014, N1 airs from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. It has become known for its professional journalism and provocative questions. N1 television and its journalists also work in a hostile environment in Serbia.
The International Press Institute said on Tuesday that it has joined four other media watchdog organisations in writing to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to express concerns over a decline in press freedom in Slovenia since the government of Janez Jansa came to power.
“We believe the repeated denigration of journalists, combined with the ruling party’s attempts to exert greater control over the country’s public service media, are creating an increasing hostile climate for critical reporting which serves its fundamental role of holding the government to account,” the five organisations said in the letter.
They claimed that as prime minister, Jansa has increasingly employed “Trumpian style tactics” of attacking journalists on Twitter and dismissing critical reporting as “fake news”, but warned that these attacks “go well beyond mere rhetoric”.
The letter was signed by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the European Federation of Journalists, OBC Transeuropa and Reporters Without Borders as well as the International Press Institute.
The Slovenian Government Communication Office, UKOM, faced strong criticism in February after it announced that it will suspend payment for the services provided by the Slovenian Press Agency, STA in January – the second time it has suspended the state-funded STA’s payments in recent months.
In the coming months, the media watchdog organisations’ letter said, the European Commission must respond publicly to any future attacks on the media by Jansa.
“It is vital for press freedom and democracy in the EU that Slovenia does not follow further down the illiberal path forged by Hungary and Poland,” they stated.
The problems facing media freedom in Slovenia, together with the situation for the press in Poland and Hungary, was discussed at the European Parliament’s plenary session last week.
Jansa’s policies could attract greater international attention in the second half of this year, when Slovenia will hold the presidency of Council of the European Union.
Jansa denies restricting media freedoms, and wrote a letter to von der Leyen in late February to insist that the allegations are “absurd”.
The Hungarian Media Council’s decision last September not to renew the broadcast license of Klubradio, the country’s last remaining opposition radio station, surprised no one. The council did not bother to offer corroboration for its claims that Klubradio repeatedly violated media laws, nor did anyone expect it to. The episode is merely the latest instalment in the Hungarian government’s long-running campaign against independent media.
The onslaught began immediately after the 2010 general election, when Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party returned to power. The government immediately adopted a raft of laws imposing new restrictions on media outlets, and established the loyalist-staffed Media Council to enforce them. Within a year or so, all independent journalists who had worked in public media had been ousted, and the public broadcaster became a government mouthpiece.
Since then, Fidesz has steadily tightened its grip on Hungarian media. Through a clutch of supportive oligarchs, the party has seized control of major television and radio stations, news portals, and print media publishers. And in late 2018, Orban-aligned oligarchs established the Central European Press and Media Foundation, which now serves as a holding company for some 500 media entities.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L) and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (R) attend a handover ceremony the child armour of Sigismund II Augustus on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Visegrad Cooperation in Krakow, southern Poland, 17 February 2021. EPA-EFE/Art Service 2
An inspiration to aspiring autocrats
The effect of such centralization of media ownership and control – not seen since the pre-1989 communist era – has been profound. Last summer, the editor-in-chief of Index, Hungary’s leading news portal, was fired on obviously political grounds, prompting a mass exodus of journalists who resigned in protest.
What might once have been dismissed as an isolated experiment by an increasingly autocratic regime has evolved into a comprehensive program of media capture, a term used to describe extreme levels of control by government authorities working in cahoots with powerful business interests. Orban’s approach to the media has become a source of inspiration for oligarchs and autocratic governments around the world. Particularly in Europe, the Hungarian model is being replicated at a frenzied pace.
For example, Serbia’s state-owned Telekom Srbija has been using taxpayer money to acquire independent media companies and television channels, including PRVA TV and O2, and transform them into pro-government outlets. And in Poland, the right-wing ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), openly calls for the “repolonization” of the country’s media. To that end, PKN Orlen, a state-run oil company, recently acquired Polska Press, a German-owned publisher of 20 regional dailies and nearly 120 weeklies.
Moreover, Hungarian oligarchs have themselves been expanding into several Western Balkan countries, with banker Jozsef Vida’s TV2 Group taking over the popular Slovenian channel Planet TV. And that acquisition followed a series of investments by Hungarian oligarchs in right-wing media companies in Slovenia and Macedonia. Orban has long supported Slovenia’s right-wing extremist prime minister, Janez Jansa, and in 2018 he offered political asylum to former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who had fled his country to avoid a two-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption.
Finally, in a separate development last October, Czech businessman Petr Kellner’s financial group, PPF, bought Central European Media Enterprises, a broadcast network with operations in five Central and Eastern European countries. Although Kellner has pledged to respect CME’s editorial independence, critics question his commitment in light of what has happened to other oligarch-acquired media in the Czech market. For example, outlets previously bought by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s businesses have kept their editorial coverage attuned to their owner’s interests, despite promises that their independence would be respected.
Media capture is not limited to Europe. Through a combination of forced acquisitions and regulatory measures, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has brought most of his country’s prominent media outlets under the control of loyal oligarchs. In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi launched his second term in 2018 by restructuring the media to ensure that it serves his regime. And over the past ten years, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has co-opted most media outlets through state bodies and family members, relying on a strategy orchestrated by his wife, Murillo.
Following the call of the opposition Momentum party, demonstrators march against the dismissal of the editor-in-chief of the Hungarian news website Index.hu, in the streets of Budapest, Hungary, 24 July 2020. EPA-EFE/ZSOLT SZIGETVARY
Strangling independent journalism
Whether it takes the form of Sisification, Orbanization or repolonization, media capture is strangling journalism in the affected countries and making it increasingly difficult for citizens to access objective information. In those cases where independent journalism has not been suppressed entirely, it has been pushed to the margins. Though there are still a few media outlets operating free of government influence in Hungary, they are too small to counter the regime’s massive propaganda machine.
Moreover, when media capture reaches the point that it has in Hungary, remaining independent outlets must tread carefully. That has certainly been the case for RTL Klub, a popular Hungarian television broadcaster owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which suffered a loss of revenue as a result of legal provisions adopted by the Hungarian government in 2014.
Though tackling media capture is an uphill battle, there are at least some partial solutions in sight. One is to reform how public media are funded; however, this is perhaps the most difficult approach, because it targets the central mechanism by which autocrats themselves tend to control the media. Another option is to increase reliance on funding from other donors, be they private foundations, entrepreneurs, or philanthropies – many of which already support independent media. Finally, with their disproportionate influence over the current media ecosystem, today’s tech giants could be pressured to elevate, protect, or otherwise privilege independent journalism on their platforms.
Without a firm response, the epidemic of media capture will continue to spread. As long as it does, no country will be safe from the threat.
Marius Dragomir is Director of the Center for Media, Data, and Society at Central European University, and managed the research and policy portfolio of the Program on Independent Journalism in London.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN. Copyright Project Syndicate. Not for republication.
A tribunal in Iasi in northeastern Romania has ordered the pre-trial detention of 30 days for a man arrested last Thursday for allegedly stealing half a million euros in crypto from a leading cryptocurrency operator, sources from the organised crime prosecution office told BIRN.
The victim of the fraud is a company based in the Cayman Islands, and the seventh-largest cryptocurrency operator in the world, prosecutors said in a statement.
According to the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism, DIICOT, the suspect broke into the system using the Application Programming Interface key, which he had fraudulently obtained before launching his cyberattack between January 28 and 31 this year.
After accessing the system, he transferred cryptocurrency worth 620,000 US dollars, or 520,000 euros, to the personal accounts of several people who paid him in real money for the digital assets.
“In order to hide the criminal deeds, the accused chose to take possession of the money through several withdrawals of small sums of 10,000 lei [around 2,000 euro] so he was not asked to provide an ID document,” the DIICOT statement said.
The operation that led to his arrest included raids in two locations from which seven cellphones, three laptops, five memory sticks as well as two e-wallets and 10,800 lei in cash were seized.
Romanian law enforcement agencies also sequestrated 40,000 lei from the account of one of the bitcoin traders who had bought stolen crypto from the accused.
The suspect will be charged with illegally accessing an informatic system, informatic fraud and money laundering.
It wasn’t voting irregularities or the counting of postal ballots that delayed the results of last year’s parliamentary election in North Macedonia, but an audacious denial-of-service, DDoS, attack on the website of the country’s election commission.
Eight months on, however, the perpetrator or perpetrators behind the most serious cyber attack in the history of North Macedonia have still to be identified, let alone brought to justice.
While it’s not unusual for hackers to evade justice, last year’s Election Day attack is far from the only case in North Macedonia still waiting to be solved.
“Although some steps have been taken in the meantime to improve the situation, it’s still not enough,” Eurothink, a Skopje-based think-tank that focuses on foreign and security policy, told BIRN in a statement.
“The low rate of solved cyber-crime cases is another indicator of the low level of readiness to solve cyber-attacks, even in cases of relatively ‘less sophisticated’ and ‘domestic’ cyber threats.”
Across the Balkans, states like North Macedonia have put down on paper plans to tackle the threat from cyber terrorism, but the rate of attacks in recent years – coupled with the fact many remain unresolved – point to serious deficiencies in practice, experts say. Alarmingly, Bosnia and Hercegovina does not even have a comprehensive, state-level cyber security strategy.
“I am convinced that all countries [in the region] are vulnerable,” said Ergest Nako, an Albanian technology and ecosystems expert. “If an attack is sophisticated, they will hardly be able to protect themselves.”
In the case of Albania, Nako told BIRN, “the majority of targets lack the proper means to discover and react to cyber-attacks.”
“With the growing number of companies and state bodies developing digital services, we will witness an increasing number of attacks in the future.”
Ransomware a ‘growing threat’ to Balkan states
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Dimitri Karastelev
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the threat from cyber-attacks and the impact on lives.
According to the 2021 Threat Report from security software supplier Blackberry, hospitals and healthcare providers were of “primary interest” to cyber criminals waging ransomware attacks while there were attacks too on organisations developing vaccines against the novel coronavirus and those involved in their transportation.
Skopje-based cyber security engineer Milan Popov said ransomware – a type of malware that encrypts the user’s files and demands a ransom in order access – is a growing danger to Balkan states too.
“Bearing in mind the state of cyber security in the Western Balkans, I would say that this is also a growing threat for these countries as well,” Popov told BIRN. “While there haven’t been any massive ransomware attacks in the region, there have been individual cases where people have downloaded this type of malware on their computers, and ransoms were demanded by the various attackers.”
A year ago, hackers targeted the public administration of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, blocking a data system and demanding some 400,000 euros to stop.
“We’re not paying the ransom,” Novi Sad Milos Vucevic said at the time. “I don’t even know how to pay it, how to justify the cost in the budget. It is not realistic to pay that. Nobody can blackmail Novi Sad,” he told Serbia’s public broadcaster.
A local company announced the following that it had “eliminated the consequences” of the attack.
In Serbia, cyber security is regulated by the Law on Information Security and the 2017 Strategy for the Development of Information Security, but Danilo Krivokapic of digital rights organisation Share Foundation said that implementation of the legal framework remained a problem.
“The question is – to what extent our state bodies, which are covered by this legal norm, are ready to implement such measures?” Krivokapic told BIRN. “They must adopt [their own] security act; they need to undertake measures to protect the information system.”
Political battles waged in cyber space
Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Stephen Phillips
North Macedonia was the target of a string of cyber attacks last year, some attributed to a spillover of political disputes into cyber space.
In May 2020, a Greek hacker group called ‘Powerful Greek Army’ hacked dozens of e-mail addresses and passwords of employees in North Macedonia’s finance and economy ministry and the municipality of the eastern town of Strumica.
The two countries have been at odds for decades over issues of history and identity, and while a political agreement was reached in 2018 tensions remain. Similar issues dog relations between North Macedonia and its eastern neighbour Bulgaria, too.
“Cyber-attacks can happen when a country has a political conflict, such as the current one with Bulgaria or previous one with Greece, but they are very rare,” said Suad Seferi, a cyber security analyst and head of the Informational Technologies Sector at the International Balkan University in Skopje.
“However, whenever an international conflict happens, cyber-attacks on the country’s institutions follow.”
Bosnia without state-level strategy
Illustration. Photo: Naipo de CEE
In Bosnia, the state-level Security Ministry was tasked in 2017 with adopting a cyber security strategy but, four years on, has yet to do so.
“Although some strategies at various levels in Bosnia are partially dealing with the cyber security issue, Bosnia remains the only South Eastern European country without a comprehensive cyber security strategy at the state level,” the Sarajevo office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, told BIRN.
It also lacks an operational network Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) with sufficient coverage across the country, the mission said.
The Security Ministry says it has been unable to adopt a comprehensive strategy because of the non-conformity of bylaws, but that the issue will be included in the country’s 2021-2025 Strategy for Preventing and Countering Terrorism.
So far, only the guidelines of a cyber security strategy have been adopted, with the help of the OSCE.
Predrag Puharic, Chief Information Security Officer at the Faculty for Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies in Sarajevo, said the delay meant Bosnia was wide open to cyber attacks, the danger of which he said would only grow.
“I think that Bosnia and Herzegovina has not set up the adequate mechanisms for prevention and reaction to even remotely serious attacks against state institutions or the citizens themselves,” Puharic told BIRN.
The country’s defence ministry has its own cyber security strategy, but told BIRN it would easier “if there were a cyber-security strategy at the state level and certain security measures, such as CERT”.
‘Entire systems jeopardised’
A laptop screen displays a message after it was infected with ransomware during a worldwide cyberattack. Photo: EPA/ROB ENGELAAR
Strengthening cybersecurity capacities was a requirement of Montenegro when it was in the process of joining NATO in 2019, prompting the creation of the Security Operations Centre, SOC.
According to the country’s defence ministry, protection systems have detected and prevented over 7,600 ‘non-targeted’ malware threats – not targeted at any particular organisation – and more than 50 attempted ‘phishing’ attacks over the past two years.
“In the previous five years several highly sophisticated cyber threats were registered,” the ministry told BIRN. “Those threats came from well-organised and sponsored hacker groups.”
Previous reports have identified a scarcity of cyber experts in the country as an obstacle to an effective defence. Adis Balota, a professor at the Faculty of Information Technologies in Podgorica, commended the strategies developed by the state, but said cyber terrorism remained a real threat regardless.
“Cyber-attacks of various profiles have demonstrated that they can jeopardise the functioning of entire systems,” Balota said. “The question is whether terrorists can do the same because they are using cyberspace to recruit, spread propaganda and organise their activities.”
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of BIRN and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union nor of Hedayah.
After new legislation on copyright and related rights issues passed first its reading in the Croatian parliament, journalists’ associations are warning that it will not adequately protect the rights of journalists and that it gives greater rights to publishers.
Valentina Wiesner, president of the Society for the Protection of Journalists’ Copyright, DZNAP, said that the problematic part of the law concerns the relationship between authors of copyrighted work and employers.
She explained that under the proposed new law, if copyrighted work is created while the author is employed by a company, copyright will be transferred in full to the company, and will remain with the company after the author ceases working for it.
“This is really not a practice that exists anywhere in European law,” Wiesner told BIRN.
Last week, the Croatian Journalists’ Union, the Croatian Journalists’ Association and DZNAP sent an open letter to the government, parliament and Culture and Media Ministry with their own proposals for amending copyright legislation.
The law currently in force says that five years after the date of completion of work created while the author was working for a company, the copyright belongs to the author.
Under the proposed new law, as it has been interpreted by journalists’ organisations, the employer retains the copyright forever.
The journalists’ organisations want the employer only to have the option to assign the right to use an author’s work while an employment contract in force. After the termination of the contract, the employer and the author should make a new contract which will determine the amount of compensation for each future use of copyrighted works, the journalists’ organisations argue.
Wiesner also said that it is a problem is that copyrighted work done by journalists is not specifically listed as a category in the proposed legislation.
In June 2019, the EU adopted Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive – which says it provides “a high level of protection for rights holders” – giving member states two years to enact new national laws reflecting its provisions. That is why many European countries, including Croatia, have to change their current legislation.
The European Federation of Journalists last month warned its members to closely monitor the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive in order to avoid the “Croatian scenario” and the possible denial of income to journalists through the introduction of new legislation.
Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen Korzinek told parliament in February while presenting the law that it would ensure that journalists and publishers are paid for the content they produced.
Maja Sever, the president of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists told BIRN that there is room for changing the proposed law and that her union is trying to work with the ministry.
“It is clear to us that the conditions in which we all work have changed… but our job is to deal with the protection of the copyrights of individuals,” Sever said.
At first, journalist Tugay Can had no idea why he had been taken in for police questioning on March 25 last year in the Turkish port city of Izmir. Then cybercrime officers told him he was suspected of spreading fear and panic because of a report he wrote, published two days earlier, about COVID-19 outbreaks in two community health centres in the city that were subsequently quarantined.
“After I confirmed it with my sources, I reported the situation”, Can, who at the time worked for the local Izmir newspaper Iz Gazete, told BIRN.
Pressed to name his sources, Can refused. Hours of questioning resulted in a charge of spreading fake news and causing panic. The case was dropped several months later, but Can’s chilling experience was far from a one-off.
According to the media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Can was among 10 Turkish editors and reporters interrogated just in March of last year concerning their coverage of the pandemic that had just begun.
“Governments are using the pandemic as an advantage over freedom speech,” Can said.
Turkey is well-known for its jailing of journalists, but it was not the only country in the region to employ draconian tools to control the pandemic narrative. Nor have journalists been the only targets.
BIRN has confirmed dozens of cases in which regular citizens have faced charges of causing panic on social media or in person. There are indications the true number of cases runs into the hundreds.
Whether dealing with accurate but perhaps unflattering news reports or with what the World Health Organisation called last year an “infodemic” of false information, governments have not hesitated to turn to social media giants to get hold of the information that could help them track down those deemed to be breaking the rules.
“Every government has a duty to promote reliable information and correct harmful and untrue allegations in order to protect the personal integrity and trust of citizens,” said Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, head of the Montenegrin NGO Human Rights Action.
“But any measure taken to combat misinformation should not violate the fundamental right to expression.”
Internet sites shut down
Illustration: Unsplash.com
Battling an invisible enemy, governments across the region have sought to restrict information while cracking down on media reporting or social media posts that deviate from the official narrative. ‘Misinformation’ has been criminalised.
Some of these restrictions were part of the states of emergency that were declared; others were introduced with new legislation that outlasts any temporary emergency decrees.
But who draws the line between the right to free speech and the need to preserve public order?
In its November 2020 COVID and Free Speech report, the Council of Europe rights body cautioned that “crisis situations should not be used as a pretext for restricting the public’s access to information or clamping down on critics.”
But that’s precisely what has happened in some countries.
In Hungary, the Penal Code was amended to criminalise the dissemination of “false or distorted facts capable of hindering or obstructing the efficiency of the protection efforts” for the duration of a state of emergency, first between March and June and again since November.
Parliament subsequently passed a bill making it easier for governments to declare such emergencies in future. In March, the government introduced punishments of one to five years in prison for spreading “falsehoods” or “distorted truth” deemed to obstruct efforts to combat the pandemic.
Similar restrictions were imposed in Bosnia’s mainly Serb-populated Republika Srpska entity and in Romania.
The Centre for Independent Journalism, CJI, an NGO that promotes media freedom and good journalistic practices, has raised concern that provisions enacted as part of a state of emergency between mid-March and mid-May 2020 to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus in Romania could hamper the ability of journalists to inform the public.
“The most worrying aspect of all this is, from my perspective, the limitations to the access to information of public interest,” said CJI executive director Cristina Lupu.
“The lack of transparency of the authorities is a very bad sign and the biggest problem our media faces now,” Lupu told BIRN, lamenting the fact it left the public without “access to timely information.”
In March 2020, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, raised concern about what it said was the “removal of reports and entire websites, without providing appeal or redress mechanisms” in Romania.
The Venice Commission, the CoE’s advisory body on constitutional affairs, stressed that even in emergency situations, exceptions to freedom of expression must be narrowly construed and subject to parliamentary control to ensure that the free flow of information is not excessively impeded.
“It is doubtful whether restrictions on publishing “false” information about a disease that is still being studied can be in line with the [Venice Commission] requirement unless it concerns blatantly false or outright dangerous assertions,” it said.
Instead of prevention, fines and prison terms
Early on in the pandemic, the Republika Srpska government issued a decree allowing it to introduce punitive measures, including fines, for spreading ‘fake news’ about the virus in the media and on social networks during the state of emergency.
According to the decree, anyone using social or traditional media to spread ‘fake news’ and cause panic or public disorder faced possible fines of between 500 and 1,500 euros for private individuals and 1,500 and 4,500 euros for companies or organisations. It is not known how many people have been fined. The decree was dismissed in April.
In Montenegro, Article 398 of the Criminal Code, introduced in 2013, foresees a fine or a prison sentence of up to 12 months for the spreading of false news or allegations which cause panic or serious disturbances of public order or peace. For journalists, the punishment runs to three years in prison. The law was hardly used until protests erupted at the end of 2019 over a controversial religious freedom law.
In July 2019, long before the pandemic, North Macedonia’s government unveiled an action plan to deal with ‘fake news’, and doubled down in March 2020 with a vow to punish anyone deemed to be sharing disinformation about the novel coronavirus.
Skopje-based communications and new media specialist Bojan Kordalov said authorities would be better off focusing on prevention and raising awareness.
“It is necessary to build a system of active and digital transparency, as well as to create a real strategy for fast and efficient two-way communication of institutions with citizens and the media, which means highly-trained and prepared staff for 24-hour monitoring and publication of official and credible information to the public,” Kordalov told BIRN.
In Turkey, media censorship, particularly of online outlets, has increased since the onset of the pandemic, according to a report published in November by the Journalists’ Association of Turkey.
According to the report, between July and September 2020 alone, RTUK, the state agency for monitoring, regulating and sanctioning radio and television broadcasts, issued 90 penalties against independent media, including halts to broadcasting and administrative fines.
The government also passed several new draconian laws concerning digital rights and civil society organisations, forcing social media companies to appoint legal representatives to respond to government demands, including those requiring the closure of accounts or deleting of social media posts.
It is not known how many people were investigated or arrested under the new measures, but administrative fines during the pandemic totalled roughly one billion Turkish liras, or 115 million euros.
‘Fake news’ arrests
Illustration: Unsplash.com
In North Macedonia, fake news stories shared on social media ranged from a report that a garage was being used as a COVID-19 testing facility to health authorities being accused of negligence that led to the death of two sisters from COVID-19 complications. One fake story claimed food shortages were imminent.
According to the country’s Ministry of Interior, by September 2020 authorities had acted on a total of 58 cases stemming from the alleged dissemination of fake news related to COVID-19. Thirty-one cases were forwarded to prosecutors and criminal charges have been pressed in three, a ministry spokesman told BIRN.
In Serbia, the penalty for the crime of causing disorder and panic is imprisonment for between three months and three years, as well as a fine. According to Serbian Interior Ministry, in the first two months of the pandemic dozens of people were charged.
After she broke news about the disarray in the Clinical Centre of Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern province, Nova.rs reporter Ana Lalic was questioned by police and her home was searched.
In neighbouring Montenegro, a heated political row over a disputed law on religions saw some people arrested for spreading panic even before the country confirmed its first case of COVID-19.
BIRN was able to confirm 14 cases in which journalists, editors and members of the public were arrested for causing panic.
Similarly in Turkey, the interior ministry investigated, fined and detained hundreds of people in the first few months of the pandemic over their social media posts. Later, however, the ministry stopped publishing such data.
Critics say the government was determined to muzzle complaints about its handling of the pandemic and the economy.
“Turkey in general has a problem when it comes to freedom of speech,” said Ali Gul, a lawyer and rights activist. “The government increases its pressure because it does not want people to speak about its failures.” Ali Gul.
In Croatia, no journalist has been charged with spreading fake news during the pandemic, but that’s not to say there was not any misleading information.
“Without any hesitation, I can say that, unfortunately, a large number of citizens have been involved in spreading false news,” said Tomislav Levak, a teaching assistant and PhD candidate at the Academy of Art and Culture in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek. “But in my opinion, in most cases, it is actually unintentional because they do not think critically enough.”
The Interior Ministry said that it had registered 40 violations of Article 16 of the Law on Misdemeanors against Public Order and Peace, “which are related to the COVID-19 epidemic”.
Rise in state requests to social media giants
The transparency reports of Facebook and Twitter shed light on the scale of government efforts to find and track accounts suspected of spreading panic.
According to Twitter, in 2020 emergency disclosure requests – when law enforcement bodies seek account information – accounted for roughly one out of every five global information requests submitted to Twitter, increasing by 20 per cent during the reporting period while the aggregate number of accounts specified in these requests increased by 24 per cent.
Turkey accounts for three per cent of all government requests for information from Twitter.
In the first six months of last year, Turkey registered a 160 per cent increase in emergency requests compared to the same period in 2019.
North Macedonia saw a 175 per cent increase.
In terms of removal requests, they multiplied several times over from Serbia, Turkey and Poland.
As for Facebook, Turkey last year submitted 6,171 requests, a threefold increase from 2019. In 4,904 cases, Facebook disclosed data, compared to 1,513 cases in 2019. Poland made 4,572 requests, up from 3,397 in 2019, and received information back in 2,666 cases, compared to 1,902 the previous year.
When it comes to legal process requests – when states ask for account information to aid an investigation – Turkey and Poland lead the region with 6,143 and 4,200 requests respectively, roughly double the numbers in 2019.
Compared to the same period in 2019, Facebook data shows a significant rise in all sorts of requests from most countries in the region.
In terms of preservation requests – when law enforcement bodies ask Facebook to preserve account records that may serve as evidence in legal proceedings – Bosnia and Herzegovina registered an increase of just over 150 per cent.
Turkey accounts for 3.55 per cent of and Poland 2.63 per cent of all government requests for information from Facebook.
Lawsuits designed to silence
And if that wasn’t enough, some media faced lawsuits that watchdogs say were designed simply to stop the free flow of information – a so-called SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, the purpose of which is to censor or intimidate critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence.
In Poland, the publisher and journalists of the weekly Newsweek Polska were subjected to a SLAPP for their reporting on Polish clothing company LLP, owner of the Reserved brand, which the weekly said had been sending masks bought in Poland to its factories in China despite a severe shortage in Poland.
The company is seeking damages of €1.37 million, an apology, the removal of articles about LPP published on March 22 and a “ban on disseminating claims that suggest that the company’s position on this matter is untrue.”
The case is ongoing.
Also in Poland, a court dismissed lawsuits brought against media outlet Wyborcza by Polish KGHM, one of the world’s biggest producers of copper and silver, over stories revealing that the company had paid huge sums of money for worthless masks from China.
In Turkey, a court granted a take-down request by pasta producer Oba Makarna over a report that 26 of its factory workers in the south-central city of Gaziantep had tested positive for COVID-19. According to the court ruling, while the report was true, it damaged the company’s commercial reputation.
In its report, the CoE warned that restrictions introduced during the pandemic could give rise to increased use of civil lawsuits, particularly defamation cases.
“While their use did not increase dramatically during the height of the pandemic, there is some concern that pandemic-related reporting will be subjected to SLAPP lawsuits and defamation cases in the future, it said.
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