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 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
International and local Kosovo press associations have condemned the attack against an investigative journalist who was brutally beaten near his house in Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje, at around midnight on Wednesday.
Visar Duriqi, a journalist of the local Kosovo online news portal Insajderi as well as the author and producer of local show INDOKS, was assaulted by three unidentified individuals at around midnight after a TV debate.
“Three people had been waiting for the journalist Duriqi, in front of the entrance of his apartment. He was attacked as soon as he got out of his car,” Insajderi reported on Thursday.
Duriqi has authored several episodes on crime and corruption on Insajderi’s show, INDOKS.
The police are investigating the case.
“It is suspected that three masked persons attacked the victim with fists at the entrance of his apartment, causing bodily injuries. The victim was sent to the UCCK (University Clinical Center of Kosovo in Pristina), for necessary medical treatment and then he was discharged,” a police statement read.
The Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK, condemned the attack as a threat to freedom of “speech and media” and called on the authorities “to investigate the motives … and shed light over this case”. The AJK pledged also to inform domestic and international stakeholders.
On Thursday, the European Center for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, on Twitter also condemned “this brutal attack on journalist Visar Duriqi” and urged Chief Prosecutor Aleksander Lumezi “to urgently and thoroughly investigate and hold the criminals responsible to account”.
Flutura Kusari, legal advisor at ECMPF, wrote on Facebook that “violence against journalists in Kosovo is on the rise” and added that it can only be curbed if the punishments of attackers include “harsh sentences”, similarly to when a politician is attacked.
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