Category: Media freedom

Online Media Needs More Self-Regulation – not Interference: BIRN Panel

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

State regulation of the media should be limited, with self-regulation strengthened and prioritized, journalists and media experts from the region told the third and final online public debate on online media regulation held by BIRN on Wednesday.

Panelists representing different prominent media in the region as well as legal experts focused on potential solutions for self-regulation and regulation of online media, considering the growing pressures that media in the region face, such as speed, clicks and disinformation.

The panelists agreed that the government should not have mechanisms to interfere in the media content but should provide regulations to ensure a better environment for journalists to work in.

Authorities should also strengthen the rule of law in terms of copyright and censorship of hate speech, pornography, and ethical violations, they said.

Flutura Kusari, legal advisor at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, said Kosovo has a good self-regulatory non-governmental body, the Press Council, which consists of around 30 local media representatives, all holding one another accountable.

However, self-regulation is limited due to the lack of rule of law all over the region, Kusari explained.

Geri Emiri, editor at the Albanian media outlet Amfora, explained that most of the media in Albania have self-regulatory mechanisms whereby anyone can complain of abuses.

“It is not enough if the will to self-regulate, after a complaint by a citizen, does not exist,” Emiri said, explaining the difficulties media in Albania face from the government trying to create legal methods that he said lead to “censorship”.

Emiri was referring to legislation proposed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama as an “anti-defamation package”, which aimed to create an administrative body with powers to order media to take down news reports that “infringe the dignity of individuals”, under the threat of heavy fines. Critics said the law could have a chilling effect on media freedom due to its broad terms.

Goran Mihajlovski, editor-in-chief at the Macedonian media outlet Sakam da kazam, agreed that government bodies would not be right for media regulation “due to changes in government and [because] the body would politically be appointed and would open doors to more political influence and pressure on the media”.

Jelena Vasic, project manager at KRIK, Serbia, said professional media can assist in regulating the media enviroment in the region and in curbing fake news by “debunking” and fact-checking news that is already published.

Vasic said he was aware that debunked fake news often does not reach all of the audience that the fake news has already reached, but added that, “even if half of the people who read the fake news are now faced with the facts, a good change has been made”.

Alen Altoka, head of digital media at Oslobodjenje, Bosnia, said one of the main problems behind the increase in fake news in the region is profit-based media organisdations, suggesting that Google should not allow ads for fake news portals as one solution.

BIRN engages in fact checking and debunking fake news, as well as other digital rights violations in the region via its Investigation Resource Desk platform, BIRD, monitoring tool.

BIRN held its first online public debate within the Media for All project, funded by the UK government, in September 2020, followed by another debate on the topic in late December.

OSCE Chides Kosovo for Preventing Entry of Serbian Journalists

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo has said it is “concerned” about the recent denial of entry to the country by journalistic crews from Serbia at the Jarinje crossing point.

“Such actions not only contribute to the difficulties that journalists face in conducting their work, but also send a negative message about press freedom and the tolerance for a pluralistic media landscape,” OSCE Kosovo wrote on its Facebook account.

A crew for the Radio Television Serbia TV Show Right to Tomorrow was banned from entering Kosovo on Thursday. The show’s editor, Svetlana Vukumirovic, told RTS they were banned from entering because they did not announce their arrival 72 hours earlier.

“No one ever asked the show’s crew or other journalists to announce themselves in such a way before,” Vukumirovic told RTS.

Earlier, an RTS journalistic team tried to enter Kosovo on February 15, but were also denied permission. Four days later, they were officially banned from entry. The Journalists’ Association of Serbia, UNS, in a press release condemned an “attack on press freedom”.

The Association of Journalists of Kosovo and Metohija, which represents Kosovo Serb media, organised a protest on the border line on Wednesday. Association president Budimir Nicic said stopping RTS journalists from entering Kosovo was “classic harassment”.

“This is a classic harassment, this is a classic threat to human rights and media freedoms, this is a violation of all civilization values ​​and norms, and must stop,” Nicic said at the protest.

The Serbian government’s liaison officer with Pristina, Dejan Pavicevic, told the UNS that only senior state officials had an obligation to announce their arrival in advance – not journalists.

“This only applies to top government officials … We will now ask Brussels to take concrete steps because this is a flagrant violation of the [2013 Brussels] Agreement [between Belgrade and Pristina], on freedom of movement and the right of journalists to freedom of reporting,” Pavicevic told UNS.

The Independent Journalist Association of Serbia, NUNS, warned “that the journalistic profession does not serve for political undercutting and collecting points, but to report honestly and credibly on events that are of public importance”.

Kosovo and Serbia reached an agreement about officials’ visits in 2014 that included a procedure for announcing visits of officials from one country to the other. However, both countries have continued stopping officials from entering from the other country, often without explanation.

Greek Police Accused of Violence at Education Bill Protests

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Police in Greece have been criticised after videos circulated on social media of officers violently pushing and shoving photojournalists covering a protest against a new bill for universities on Wednesday.

The photojournalists’ union said riot police beat up a member of the union who had been reporting on the protests.

It added that one day before, police tripped up photojournalists covering another protest,­ this time in support of Dimitris Koufontinas – another union member, jailed on November 17 last year – now on hunger strike demanding transfer to another prison.

The new bill among other things allows police to maintain a presence on university campuses. A law withdrawn in 2019 long prohibited police from entering university grounds in Greece, in memory of those killed in 1973 when the military regime violently crushed an uprising at the Athens Polytechnic.

Niki Kerameus, the Education Minister, says the problem of security on Greek campuses has become acute and current lawlessness is forcing Greek students to study abroad.

Outside the Greek parliament, during the debate on the bill, a group of some 200 people, drawn from the main protest of some 5,000 protesters, clashed with riot police, who used tear gas to disperse them. Police took 52 individuals into custody.

Konstantinos Zilos, a photojournalist covering that protest, complained to BIRN of the police’s “dangerous repression” of citizens and media professionals.

Besides the incident involving the beaten-up photojournalist, he added, “the police a number of times have prevented our work, cutting our access without reason and blocking our cameras with their hands or bodies”.

Alexandra Tanka, a reporter for in.gr, told BIRN that a 21-year-old photography student “was surrounded in a glimpse of an eye by the riot shields and suddenly cut off from his colleagues”.


University students clash with riot police in front of the Greek parliament, during a protest against the new draft bill on higher education in central Athens, Greece, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/YANNIS KOLESIDIS

The immediate intervention of photojournalists and reporters resulted in the police letting him free. “A photojournalist asked them why they were not arresting that person who seemed to also be a photographer, pointing to a policeman holding a camera recording the demonstration,” Tanka recalled.

But not everyone was as lucky as the photography student, she said. “Students were beaten up and had to spend the night behind bars. According to reports, a girl was beaten up so badly that she was injured in the head and had to be hospitalized to get stiches.”

Nikos Markatos, former dean of the National Technical University of Athens, told the private radio station Real FM that police “were jumping on pavements with their motorbikes” and that one of these motorbikes had injured a girl, sending her to hospital – “the same hospital as my son, who was pushed, fell down and twisted his shoulder”.

Markatos said a third student who was hit on the chin with a fire extinguisher by a police officer at the protest, breaking his chin bone and some teeth, was sent to the same hospital.

Pictures shared on social media showed police violently attacking the protesters, sometimes hitting them after they had already been arrested.

Mera25, the party of former government minister Yanis Varoufakis, said Sofia Sakorafa, an MP for the party and vice-president of the Greek parliament, was also attacked by riot police outside police headquarters in Attica, where she was present when protesters were brought there on Wednesday evening.

The photojournalists’ union condemned attacks on journalists by police, saying that this was tending to become “a habit” and adding that the government had “a duty to inform us if freedom of press still exists”.

On January 21, the Minister of Citizens’ Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, presented new national guidelines for policing demonstrations.

According to these rules, journalists covering protests now have to do their work from a certain area specified by the authorities, with the minister adding this was being imposed to protect the journalists themselves.

However, rights groups disagree. On February 2, the international Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, in a report, warned that the new guidelines in Greece were “likely to restrict the media’s reporting and access to information”.

Commenting on the new guidelines, the former head of the photojournalists’ union, Marios Lolos, said that “in 99 per cent of such cases”, attacks on photojournalists covering protests do not come from protesters “but from the police”.

Independent Radio Silenced in Hungary

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Hungary’s last independent radio broadcaster Klubradio lost its battle to stay on the air on Tuesday, as the Metropolitan Court of Budapest confirmed the decision of the government-controlled Media Council not to renew its licence, meaning the radio will be forced to move online from February 14.

The move is seen as the latest step to curb critical voices in the Hungarian media by the autocratic government of Viktor Orban, which since coming to power in 2010 has set about co-opting or killing off critical media outlets, shrewdly concealing most as neutral business decisions. This has drawn sharp criticism from the European Union and media freedom watchdogs.

Klubradio has long been in the crosshairs of Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party. The last time its licences had to be renewed, it had to battle for two years through the courts.

Due to its critical tone, the radio does not receive any state advertising and so largely survives on donations from its listeners. It has a loyal audience of around 200,000, mostly in Budapest, as it can only be heard in the vicinity of the capital after being systematically stripped of its frequencies in the countryside, leaving Hungarians outside of Budapest with no independent radio to listen to.

Klubradio’s licence expires at midnight on February 14 and its journalists have been doing “survival exercises” in the last few weeks to train their largely elderly audience to switch to the radio’s online platform.

Klubradio called the verdict a political, not a legal, one. Andras Arato, president of the broadcaster, told Media1 that the verdict encapsulates the sad state of the rule of law in Hungary, which is such that a radio station can be silenced based on fabricated reasons.

Arato said it would challenge the verdict at the Supreme Court, while the CEO of the broadcaster, Richard Stock, would not rule out taking the case to the Court of Justice of the EU.

Opposition politicians slammed the government for yet another blatant move to restrict media freedom in Hungary. The chairman of the Democratic Coalition, former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, posted a quote from Orban in 2018 telling the European Parliament in Strasbourg that, “we would never dare to silence those who disagree with us”.

Gyurcsany retorted: “This government prefers silence – we have to end this paranoid system to regain free speech.”

The head of the International Press Institute (IPI), Scott Griffen, said before the court’s decision that, “these efforts by the Fidesz-controlled Media Council to block Klubradio’s license renewal are part of a far wider and calculated attempt to eradicate the station from the airwaves and muzzle one of the few independent media outlets in Hungary.”

BIRN Launches Online Community to Connect Journalists

Posted on by BIRD

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network launched a new cross-border journalism platform on Wednesday, aiming to connect more than 1,000 journalists who took part in BIRN’s programmes as fellows, trainees and grantees, as well as other journalists reporting on South-East and Central Europe.

BIRD Community offers a unique secure online environment in which to exchange information, as well as a comprehensive database and a rich contacts directory of experts across the Western Balkans.

The idea was the result of more than 15 years of experience in connecting journalists across the Balkans and beyond to produce complex regional analyses and cross-border investigations, as well as BIRN’s experience in providing comprehensive training in investigative reporting. 

The aim of BIRD Community is to make journalistic work much easier and take journalistic networking to the next level. By joining BIRD Community, journalists will get:

  • A secure environment in which they can easily reach out to BIRN’s team members and other colleagues from our alumni network across South-East and Central Europe.
  • Free access to BIRD Source, an easily searchable and comprehensive database with thousands of documents collected by BIRN over the years and exclusive data scraped from public registries and state institutions’ websites as well as information obtained through Freedom of Information requests. BIRD Source also offers journalists the opportunity to share their own documents and leaks, and has a tool that allows them to sketch a diagram online to summarise investigative findings with other journalists.
  • Access to BIRD Directory, with around 1,400 names and contacts of experts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
  • Access to Forum in which journalists can easily communicate with other members, privately or publicly.
  • The opportunity to send requests for help, information and advice from other journalists by posting them in the Bulletin Board section. The responses from other members can be made visible to all users or can be kept private.
  • Updates on grants and training opportunities. 

Members can create public or private topics in the Forum section – the former will be visible to all members, allowing any of them to join the discussion, while with the latter, the creator can choose which members will be able to participate. 

The Bulletin Board section is a place to share opportunities with others, ask for help, swap contacts or find a journalist who specialises in a particular topic. In the Bulletin Board section, members can leave posts which can either be private or be seen by all other members. 

Once members subscribe to the posts and topics they want to follow on the Forum and Bulletin Board, they will receive an email each time there is an updates. 

BIRD Community is part of a broader platform that BIRN introduced last year, BIRN Investigative Resource Desk (BIRD) – an innovative interactive platform created for professional and citizen journalists who want to keep up-to-date with the fast-changing world of technology without sacrificing their ethics or the standards of professional journalism.

Legendary Slovenian Student Radio Threatened With Loss of Funding

Posted on by BIRD

Following news that Slovenian Radio Student will lose its funding from the Student Organisation of the University of Ljubljana, SOU, many NGOs, faculties, unions, local and international press freedom watchdog organizations have voiced their support for “one of Europe’s oldest and strongest non-commercial, alternative radio stations”.

Its editor-in-chief Matjaz Zorec told BIRN that relations between the student organisation and Radio Student have been bad for years and that everything worsened after the recent election of the main student body. Its session, held at the end of last year, then proposed to allocate the radio “zero euros”.

“Now there is a public alarm… Our request is not that complicated, 120,000 euros, that’s a little more than 4 per cent of their budget,” Zorec said.

According to Radio Student, the reason for the latest budget cut is critical reporting on the SOU structure and management.

While support from the SOU represents less than a fourth of radio’s total funding, its withdrawal would jeopardise the whole funding structure which derives from the co-funding of various national and European projects.

“We are financed through Slovenian and European projects, but we cannot do these projects without this money [from SOU]. If we do not have that money, it is a radical cut,” Zorec said.

SOU, on the other hand, says the real problem is a constant reduction of funds for the entire student organisation. In 2010, the SOU’s financial plan foresaw revenue of 7.5 million euros, dropping to only 2.9 million in 2021, it said on January 6.

In another press release, on Monday, the organization stated that “reduction of funds is not related to the reporting of Radio Student but only to the reduction of funds available to SOU”, adding that it still supports “free and democratic media reporting”.

It said it was “disturbing” that Radio Student “creates public pressure and publicly slanders individuals before trying to resolve the issue of founding within the organisation”.

It said the final version of 2021 SOU’s financial plan will be adopted on Thursday, and some amendments are possible. Zorec says SOU offered some amounts to Radio Student in the meantime, but that they are not enough.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, joined its affiliates in Slovenia in condemning the SOU’s withdrawal of funds, and supporting Radio Student’s calls.

Established in 1969, Radio Student is one of Europe’s oldest and strongest non-commercial radio stations, offering diverse and dedicated programme activities, covering current political, social and cultural phenomena.

More than 300 organizations and more than 1,000 individuals have signed a petition supporting Radio Student. Most Slovenian MEPs also reacted and warned that depriving the radio station of funds would be in contradiction with EU media plurality goals and efforts.

A number of local and international press freedom watchdog organisations have accused the Slovenian government led by right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa of using the pandemic to restrict media freedoms and make often personal attacks on journalists.

Although Zorec says that the government is not directly involved in the problem of radio financing, he says that “such a climate has developed that to some people [limiting media freedom] seems normal”.

“The media were attacked in Slovenia, the vast majority of the public is against it,” he concluded.

Romania Violated Journalist’s Freedom of Expression, Says European Court

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday condemned Romania for failing to uphold freedom of expression in the case of a local journalist who was fined by a domestic court over a series of critical articles about another journalist in the north-eastern county of Bacau.

“The case concerned the domestic authorities’ decision to order the applicant, a journalist, to pay damages for having published five blog posts criticising L.B., another journalist who was the editor-in chief of a newspaper in the Desteptarea media group and producer for a local television channel belonging to the same group,” the ECHR said in a statement.

The posts were published by Gheorghe-Florin Popescu in 2011. The same year, L.B. brought civil proceedings before a court in Bacau, which ruled that two of the articles posted by Popescu lacked any factual basis when describing L.B. as morally responsible for a murder-suicide.

The Bacau court also established that Popescu had used vulgar and defamatory expressions that affected L.B.’s honour and reputation, and ordered him to compensate L.B. with the equivalent of 1,100 euros.

Popescu subsequently appealed against the verdict, but Romania’s Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal as unfounded in 2013. The journalist then took his case to the ECHR.

More than seven years later, judges at the ECHR unanimously reached the conclusion that Romania breached Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression.

According to Tuesday’s verdict, Romanian courts failed to make “a distinction between statements of facts and value judgments” when examining Popescu’s criticism of L.B.

The verdict also said that Romanian courts ignored “the fact that the applicant was a journalist and that the freedom of the press fulfilled a fundamental function in a democratic society”.

They also ignored the fact that L.B. was a publicly known figure before the controversy involving Popescu, the verdict added.

The Romanian courts ruled that some of the content of Popescu’s articles was offensive, but the ECHR concluded that “although the satirical nature of the articles had been the main argument in the applicant’s defence, the domestic courts had failed to investigate with sufficient care whether or not this was a form of exaggeration or distortion of reality, naturally aimed to provoke”.

“In the court’s view, the style was part of the form of expression and was protected as such under Article 10, in the same way as the content of the statements,” the ECHR said.

Suing to Silence: Lawsuits Used to Censor Bosnian Journalists

Posted on by BIRD

Last year, Bosnian journalist Adnan Jasarspahic wrote an article for a local portal questioning the transparency of public sector recruitment in his municipality, Visoko, after the sister of the then mayor was hired by a municipality-owned company.

That Jasarspahic was sued by the mayor, Amra Babic, for defamation was one thing. That he had to move to the capital, Sarajevo, was quite another.

In Sarajevo, he said, “If you enter a lawsuit with anyone here, you’ll find someone to defend you.” Not so in towns like Visoko, a little over 30 kilometres northwest of the capital. “What’s it like in those small towns where the local sheriffs are masters of life, in charge of everything?”

“It’s not just about being sued and about defamation itself,” Jasarspahic told BIRN. “Things run deeper here. They mess with your family.”

Jasarspahic won the case, but the damage was done. Dozens of other journalists face similar challenges every year, sued for their reporting mainly by public officials in what media bodies say is a strategy of censorship, bogging down reporters in lengthy, costly court proceedings that make many think twice about digging into the affairs of prominent people.

According to an analysis conducted by the Bosnia mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, 80 per cent of cases were brought by public officials, ignoring the principle often cited by courts that such officials submit to a higher degree of public scrutiny and criticism.

This “should not be the case,” said Kathleen Kavalec, head of the OSCE mission. “Because these are exactly the individuals who should be open to public scrutiny and journalists who are doing their jobs, holding them accountable to the citizens who voted for them.”

The analysis found that 30 per cent of those cases dragged on for more than five years, prolonging the pressure on reporters and their media outlets.

Defamation suits are being “misused to prevent journalists from investigating certain topics or certain individuals,” said Sinisa Vukelic, director of the business portal Capital and a member of the Journalists’ Club of Banja Luka in northern Bosnia.

Lawsuits as ‘intimidation’


Adnan Jasarspahic, journalist. Photo: BIRN

In Jasarspahic’s case, Babic filed the suit even without first seeking a retraction. Jasarspahic said his article on Visoko.co.ba had simply stated the facts, as did the eventual verdict in his favour handed down by the Zenica Cantonal Court.

“You are a public figure, you spend public money, you exist in public space, you give statements in public space, but you act as if I entered your private space,” Jasarspahic told BIRN.

The storm the case kicked up in Visoko, however, made life for Jasarspahic and his family intolerable, prompting their move to Sarajevo.

Babic, the former mayor, declined to comment for this story.

Media and legal experts say it was far from an isolated case.

Defamation suits are “used for intimidation,” said Biljana Radulovic, a lawyer in the eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina.

“Politicians are mostly those suing journalists with the excuse of protecting their reputation. They file lawsuits for protection from defamation, thus intimidating journalists with the enormous amounts being claimed and often won in court proceedings,” Radulovic told BIRN.

Adi Isakovic, a judge at the Municipal Court in Sarajevo, said the number of such cases grows during each election campaign and that their sheer frequency is concerning.

“The abundance of such lawsuits surely affects the independence of journalists,” Isakovic said. “If a journalist publishes a news item of public interest and gets sued for defamation, of course it will matter in the future when they publish their next investigative story that they think the public should know about.”

The growing rate of such lawsuits in recent years has led to the closure of a number of media outlets and brought others to the brink of financial collapse – Sarajevo’s Slobodna Bosna newspaper and Respekt weekly in Banja Luka among the most prominent examples.

“It was simply impossible to function within such a system,” said former Respekt journalist Zeljko Raljic, “because the judiciary is under direct political control, particularly over the last three or four years.”

Vukelic said smaller media outlets were particularly endangered given they lack the resources to fight off repeated lawsuits.

“They cannot endure the pressure,” he said. Such cases can encourage self-censorship among less experienced journalists, who might ask, “Why should I write about that topic when there are a thousand others I can address?” he said.

Years-long legal battles


Sejla Maslo Cerkic, a legal officer at the Human Rights Section of the OSCE mission in Bosnia. Photo: BIRN

When such lawsuits reach court, they can stay there for years, in some more than 11 years, said Sejla Maslo-Cerkic, a legal officer at the Human Rights Section of the OSCE mission in Bosnia.

“When cases and proceedings last this long, everything loses sense both for the party seeking protection of their reputation in court and journalists and the media outlets due to additional costs which they sometimes cannot cover,” Maslo-Cerkic told BIRN.

Court rulings are often inconsistent or contradictory, creating greater legal uncertainty for journalists, she said.

“Under our law, the burden of proving that something is true is placed on defendants, in this case the media or journalists,” Maslo-Cerkic said. “We have noticed that the standard, the scale set by the court for journalists and the media is set too high.”

Bosnian courts, she told BIRN, do not work according to the principle set by the European Court of Human Rights by which freedom of expression protects the expression of statements that may sometimes be “shocking, disturbing or embittering.”

Arben Murtezic, director of the Centre for Education of Judges and Prosecutors in the Federation, one of two entities that make up postwar Bosnia, also cited the inconsistency of court rulings in such cases, but was sceptical of any imminent change.

“It is hard to start harmonising practices without touching the basic principle of the judiciary, i.e. the independence of judges,” Murtezic said.

“Almost all defamation cases are different and special. Each of those cases, and I have really read many of them, has its own specific features and protected values and gravity and compensation amounts claimed … So, I think that hardly anything can be done in that respect.”

‘Hard to be a journalist’


Matt Field, British ambassador to Bosnia. Photo: BIRN

The situation appears even harder for female journalists, particularly in terms of the abuse they are subjected to outside the actual lawsuits.

“When we speak about the exposure of female in comparison to male journalists, I would say that women are far more susceptible to this and are mainly the subject of such sexual assaults,” said Leila Bicakcic, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Sarajevo.”

The British ambassador to Bosnia, Matt Field, agreed: “The abuse that they receive is out of proportion with their male colleagues,” he said. “It is much more unpleasant, much more personal … It is not normal. It is not part of doing their job and we should not accept that.”

Besides training for judges and prosecutors, experts say there should be strict adherence to the standards set by the European Court of Human Rights.

“We know very well, as we have learnt in the last couple of decades, that journalism is an indispensable segment of democracy,” said lawyer Nedim Ademovic.

“However, journalism is a two-way street. On one side, journalists must be educated and learn about the professional journalism standards, especially ethics in journalism and legal standards, in order to eliminate a danger of lawsuits jeopardising their independence. On the other hand, the state and even business entities dealing with journalism must ensure that journalists will be financially independent, so the fear from lawsuits would not actually lead to their self-censorship.”

Jasarspahic, from Visoko, said he knew of dozens of journalists who had given up fighting defamation suits simply because of the cost involved.

“When a journalist enters a court proceeding, you are immediately down 2,500 marka [1,276 euros]. Lawsuit, response to lawsuit, hearings … All those things cost money,” he said.

“If you lack money to defend yourself, you lose. You defend yourself with your money. Public officials defend themselves with budgetary money… Let’s face it – it’s hard to be a journalist these days. Very hard. The only way out is by solving things institutionally.”

Montenegrin Govt Urged to Commit to Press Freedom Reforms

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A group of media organisations has called on the new Montenegrin government to commit to reforms that will build and maintain media freedom.

Media Freedom Rapid Response, MFRR, the Southeast Europe Media Organization, SEEMO, and their partners published a report on Wednesday, demnanding protection of media freedom in Montenegro.

“It will take sustained and concerted efforts by Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic to improve protections for media freedom and the rule of law. They must devote particular attention to addressing the myriad problems faced by journalists and media workers in Montenegro,” said iNik Williams, coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, in a press release.

In parliamentary elections held on August 30, three opposition blocs won a slender majority of 41 of the 81 seats in parliament, ousting the long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS. After the election, on December 4, new Prime Minister Krivokapic, among other things, promised his government would restore and protect media freedom.

In the report, MFRR called for an end to impunity for crimes against journalists and media workers by ensuring police and prosecutors investigate all attacks and threats and bring perpetrators to justice.

It also called for establishing shared standards and principles for the regulation of the media market to encourage a fair playing field.

The report warned about the current ownership concentration of much of the media, saying management of state support funds and public advertising had been paired with a ruthless campaign against independent media.

The media organisations pointed to the prison sentence issued to the well-known investigative journalist Jovo Martinovic, calling it an attack on journalism. In a second-instance verdict, the court found him guilty of mediation in drug trafficking; he insisted he only met criminals for the purpose of his investigation.

“The new government should continue reform of the public broadcaster. It should start reforming journalistic source protection and, generally, ensure that all new or amended media laws are drafted in line with international standards and best practice on media freedom and pluralism,” the report said.

In its 2020 progress report on the candidate country, the European Commission noted a lack of media freedom in Montenegro, stressing that important old cases of attacks on journalists remained unresolved. The Commission warned also of the polarization of the media scene and of weak self-regulatory mechanisms.

“Concerns also remain about national public broadcaster RTCG’s editorial independence and professional standards,” the progress report said.

China Increasing its Footprint in Balkan Media, Study Concludes

Posted on by BIRD

A study presented on Wednesday authored by Vladimir Shopov, an expert on foreign relations and an European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) visiting fellow – says China is positioning itself in the media sector in Southeast Europe.

For the purpose of the study, “Getting on the Radar: China’s Rising Media Presence in South-East Europe”, Shopov said he conducted 40 interviews in eight countries over September to November, with different “media experts, journalists, policy analysts and researchers, university lecturers, diplomats, politicians and businesspeople”. The author also used desk research.

“China is creating an increasingly elaborate media cooperation framework with both state and private media institutions,” the report notes, adding that while “the focus is largely on economy and business”, it is “gradually expanding to include politics” – with mainly positive and fact-based reporting and “little critical content”.

The report elaborates on each Western Balkan country in detail.

It notes that China’s Xinhau News Agency has official collaboration deals with counterpart agencies in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia, where study visits for local journalists to China are organised often. Study visits are also organised in Croatia and Montenegro, despite a lack of extensive collaboration contracts there.

Free-of-charge Chinese content, such as documentaries “about China’s system of governance”, was brought to Albania under a 2019 agreement between the respective public broadcasters, the report recalls.

Albanian media report mainly on bilateral Chinese relations and run interviews with Chinese officials. The Chinese embassy has encouraged youngsters to write about China’s management of the pandemic.

Unlike Xinhua correspondents in Albania, who are not very active, in Bosnia and Herzegovina they engage in activities beyond journalism such as lecturing in universities.

“The other main actor is the China-focused” Kina-Danas regional media outlet, running since 2014, which reflects Beijing agenda and functions as a regional media outlet.

Stories focus on Chinese economic projects, although Chinese businesses do not usually communicate much with the media.

In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency often distributes the “photo content” of Xinhua, the report notes.

Another Chinese outlet present for decades in Sofia, which has its local network, is Economic Daily. The news portal 24 Hours has created a segment entirely based on Chinese sources and content, called Focus China. Various portals presenting views of Beijing are currently being created in the country.

Croatia’s official collaboration with Chinese media is thin and “the main platform for cooperation are annual study visits for Croatian journalists”, the report says.

The local media’s increased reporting on China focuses on individual projects or China-US relations. The biweekly magazine Globus has a supplement on China and there are unofficial reports on Chinese companies’ failed attempts to acquire Croatian media organisations.

In Kosovo, China’s non-recognition of its statehood creates “extremely limited space for interaction” there, but the Beijing liaison office, although barely noticeable, is increasing its activities. Local reports focus mainly on Serbia-China relations and on Kosovo’s non-recognition.

China’s media presence in Montenegro is also thin. Chinese media provide free content for local media, which is considered low quality by most journalists. Montenegrin events are covered by Xinhua’s correspondent in Belgrade.

Coverage of developments in China is growing in North Macedonia as well, though, “most news items are about the economy, relate to ongoing or potential bilateral projects and remain factual” and often they are just translations of Western media reports.

In 2016, China’s State Council Information Office signed a collaboration agreement with Serbia’s Ministry of Culture, which intensified “media collaboration at the institutional level”.

News items in Serbia on China are often very positive, with “all projects … presented as investments while in most cases they are being funded via loans”, the report notes. Reporting on Chinese embassy activities is mainly managed by the Serbian state, and “critical outlets are visibly kept at a distance”.

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