Category: Media freedom

Albania Courts Seize TV Stations Owned by Govt Critic

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Albania’s Special Prosecutors on Monday said they seized scores of properties of Ylli Ndroqi, one of the main media owners in the country, who has crossed swords with the government, suspecting they were the product of international drugs trading. Among the seized assets are two TV stations, Ora News and Channel One.

“We have reasons to suspect that Ylli Ndroqi (alias Xhemail Pasmaciu) and his relatives have unjustified wealth that might have originated in his criminal activity in Albania, Turkey and Italy,” prosecutors said.

Several apartments, cars, including a Rolls Royce, as well as 100,000 square metres of forested area near Tirana were seized along with the TV stations. Police forces were stationed on the premises of Ora News on Monday afternoon.

The seized television stations have hosted several talks shows critical of the Socialist government of Prime Minister Edi Rama who has made no secret of his frustration with critical media.

Ndroqi has exchanged words personally with Rama ally Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj on social media, Ndoqi accused Veliaj of attempting to silence his journalists while Veliaj accused Ndroqi of attempting to blackmail him.

Alban Qafa, a defence attorney for the suspect, told journalists that his client’s wealth was legitimate and the seizure order would be fought in the courts. “Ndroqi’s wealth has legitimate sources and we will prove this,” Qafa said, adding that his client suspected that the seizure was the result of a political attack.

Brahim Shima, director of Ora News, also considered the move a politically motivated attack, due to his station’s editorial line.

According to prosecutors, Ndroqi was arrested in Turkey in 1998 under the name Xhemail Pasmaciu while data about his suspected criminal activity were collected by the joint collaboration of Turkish and Italian authorities.

Ndroqi is not currently under arrest or charged as yet.

Hungarian Index’s Fate in Balance as Most Reporters Quit

Posted on by BIRD

The future of Hungary’s most read news site looked increasingly uncertain on Friday after 70 of its approximately 90 journalists announced their resignations following the earlier dismissal of editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull on Wednesday – which many saw as an act of gross interference in editorial freedom and a threat to the government-critical news site’s independence.

Deputy editor Veronika Munk announced in an emotional speech that the editorial staff had campaigned in vain for the return of Dull, and now mostly felt no choice except to give up their jobs. For some, it is the second time in only a few years that they have lost their jobs, after working in other media that Hungary’s government has taken over.

It is unknown whether the departing editorial staff can remain united and working together, or whether they will individually join other media outlets, or leave the media.

Index has survived an increasing hostile media environment and previously resisted attempts by government-close oligarchs to influence its content over the last ten years.

But the structure of the company around Index has made it increasing vulnerable to financial pressure. While Index is owned by a foundation, its revenue comes through a saleshouse whose managers are close to Viktor Orban’s government.

After the municipal elections in Hungary last October, when the opposition scored some unexpected victories, most notably in Budapest, the ruling Fidesz party leadership reportedly decided to up the pressure on Index, as the leading remaining critical news site, ahead of the 2022 national elections.

The turmoil around Index has had international implications. European Commission Vice President Vera Jourová has expressed concerns about the media situation in Hungary, and in particular, about Index. The Commission has been in touch with Index, Politico quoted her as saying.

Hungarian officials have angrily denied involvement. When Hungary’s Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, was asked in Lisbon by a Reuters journalists whether a country without media freedom still qualified as a free country, Szijjártó lashed out against criticism “against Hungary”.

He said the government has nothing to do with a management decision of a private company and stated that no law in Hungary “hinders press freedom”. Hungarian opposition Momentum party meanwhile said it planned a demonstration in support of Index and media freedom on Friday in Budapest.

Serbian Police Attack Journalists In Second Night of Clashes

Posted on by BIRD

Serbian police clashed with thousands of angry citizens on Wednesday night, on the second day of protests against the official handling of the coronavirus crisis and the announced reimposition of restrictive measures, including a curfew on weekend. Besides the capital city of Belgrade, protests were held in other cities, including Novi Sad, Nis, Kragujevac and Smederevo.

In Belgrade, violent clashes with police lasted hours, with police using tear gas to disperse crowds. In Kragujevac, protesters smashed some of the windows of the police building.

Protesters in Novi Sad threw rocks and rubbish bins at the windows of the ruling Progressive Party facilities, at Radio Television of Vojvodina and at city hall, breaking some windows.

Miran Pogacar, one of the people who called for protests in Novi Sad, blamed pro-government infiltrators for the violence in Novi Sad. Pogacar was arrested some hours later and is still in custody.

In Belgrade, 19 policemen and 17 protesters were injured on Wednesday night, according to city hospital data.

Cameras caught numerous examples of the police using excessive force, with several attacks on journalists also reported.

Journalists from Nova.rs portal, Beta news agency, as well as from the Serbian public broadcaster RTS were all attacked while covering the protests on Wednesday night – the latter by the protesters.

Three journalists of Nova.rs said they were attacked by police, although they had identified themselves as journalists.

Marko Radonjic said he was hit by a police baton and threatened with arrest. Police hit another journalist, Milica Bozinovic while knocking her phone to the ground. Her colleague Natasa Latkovic’s journalists ID was thrown by the police, Nova.rs said.

Beta news agency said police injured their reporter, despite showing them a journalist’s ID. The journalist suffered cuts to his head and near his eye, and the police also returned to beat him while he was lying on the ground.

“They beat him with batons, even though he let them know that a journalist was on duty, even when he fell to the ground,” Beta said.

In Nis, protesters surrounded the journalist and the cameraman from Radio Television of Serbia, RTS, insulted them and grabbed their microphones and camera cables, while the cameramen was hit on the head with a bottle.

The violence stopped after journalists from Juzne vesti intervened and helped their colleagues escape the area. RTS has been widely criticized by protesters for not properly reporting the rallies.

The SafeJournalists network, which represents more than 8,200 media professionals in the Western Balkans, on Thursday condemned the violence against journalists and asked the authorities to guarantee their rights to work.

“In accordance with its mandate, the police must ensure a safe working environment for journalists and must determine who and why has violated their rights during the protest. It must determine whether the powers of the police have been exceeded and, if so, prosecute the responsible persons,” it said.

Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said on Wednesday night at a press conference that the police had acted with restraint while they were pelted with stones and torches and had reacted in self-defence.

“They started intervening when the violence became unbearable and when their lives were in danger,” Stefanovic said.

Tanja Fajon, president of the European Parliament’s Stabilization and Association Committee between Serbia and the EU, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the footage from Serbia looked brutal and that the safety and health of people should come in the first place.

“The use of force is unacceptable. Angry people accuse President Vucic of deliberately concealing the real health picture [with COVID-19] until the recent elections. Safety and health of people are in the first place. But not with repression,” Fajon wrote on Twitter. .

President Aleksandar Vucic on Wednesday blamed far-right organisations, anti-migrant extremists and fantasists who “believe the Earth is a flat plate” for the violence.

“These people were not talking about coronavirus – they were talking about some kind of betrayal, about migrants, the 5G network and the earth as a flat plate, and these people were not there for the first time, only their degree of aggression was higher,” Vucic said.

He added that one reason for the protest was to weaken the position of Serbia ahead of the continuation of the EU-aided dialogue with Kosovo.

Violent protests erupted on Tuesday evening after Vucic announced that, due to the rise in COVID-19 cases, the capital might again be under a curfew this weekend.

During the now lifted state of emergency, Serbian citizens spent several whole weekends under curfews. Serbia was one of few countries in Europe to impose such tough measures.

Critics accused the President of manipulating health measures for his own political gains. He lifted heavy restrictions ahead of the elections on June 21.

In the run-up to the election, no restrictions were in place. During that time, political parties held rallies, the government allowed football games to take place in the presence of thousands of people, while the state Crisis Staff said situation with the coronavirus was no longer alamring.

The day after the elections, BIRN published an investigation that showed that more than twice as many infected patients had died in Serbia than the authorities announced, and hundreds more people had tested positive for the virus in than was admitted.

After the elections, when the numbers of deaths and infections again started to increase, many towns and cities in Serbia announced states of emergency linked to the pandemic.

Pandemic Worsens Crisis for Media in Central, Eastern Europe

Posted on by BIRD

The COVID-19 pandemic in nine countries of Central and Eastern Europe has caused major difficulties to the media in continuing their work, especially the print media, and has further undermined press freedom, a report published on Friday by the Berlin-based media NGO n-ost said.

The report looks at the situation facing the media in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Its main conclusions are that the pandemic has accelerated the transition from print to online media, but that “recent surges in online readership have not translated into more financial stability”.

It said that the “lockdowns have caused print media sales and advertising revenue to collapse” and that “various emergency laws and provisions allowed governments increased control over public information”.

While the economic situation differs from country to country, the situation in each with regards to media freedom tends to be similar.

The majority of governments in the region, it said, have used the health situation to tighten control over the information flow, limiting access to COVID-19-related data beyond those officially announced, for example.

Some countries, like Serbia or Hungary, passed laws or regulations penalizing reporting on unauthorized information.

Some media outlets in Bulgaria either cut pay for journalists during the crisis, or fired staff, or shut down entire newsrooms.

The situation is especially hard for Bulgarian regional publications, “which have been struggling to stay afloat for years, [and] are expected to bear the brunt of the coronavirus-related crisis”, the report said.

According to the same report, the COVID-19 pandemic has also hit freelance journalists in Croatia hard.

“According to a survey conducted by the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists in April, 28.7 per cent of 164 freelance journalists surveyed had had all their assignments (and 26 per cent most of their assignments) cancelled since the beginning of the crisis,” the report said.


Journalists watch on TV the broadcast of the program convention of President Andrzej Duda presented in the village of Szeligi, Poland on May 1, 2020. Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, the event takes place without the participation of the public. Photo: EPA-EFE/RADEK PIETRUSZKA POLAND OUT

In the Czech Republic, Respekt, one of the country’s most important print weeklies, “reported a 60-70 per cent drop in advertising revenues compared to pre-pandemic levels”, it noted. Similar falls happened in other print media.

“In contrast to print media, online news platforms recorded surging visitor numbers in March and April, in some cases increases of more than 100 per cent … However, figures from mid-May suggest that visitor numbers are returning to pre-crisis levels,” the report said.

The situation is similar in Poland and Hungary. Some two-thirds of Hungary’s media outlets told the Hungarian Publishers’ Association that the situation caused by the pandemic had caused major disruption to operations. One of the most affected areas is the advertising market.

“The stagnation of the advertising market played a significant role in the loss of revenue, which according to the advertising companies, may reduce the overall size of the market by 38 per cent, or HUF 75 billion [some 213,4 million EUR] in 2020 on a year-to-year basis,” the report said.

In North Macedonia, some media had to form their own internal solidarity fund in order to help colleagues that risk losing their jobs.

In Romania, businesses affected by the lockdown have stopped advertising, depriving the local media of one of their most important sources of income.

“Interviews with local media managers indicate that they have lost 70 to 80 per cent of their advertising budgets since the pandemic began, pushing them to the verge of collapse,” the report noted.

Serbia also noted a decrease in newspaper circulation during the crisis. Unofficial data that the report quotes say that “daily newspapers, with the exception of Danas, have seen a drop of between 35-50 per cent in circulation during the crisis”.

According to the report in Slovenia “the media’s advertising revenues have been slashed by a third after private companies went out of business”.

“Confronted by the crisis, media outlets have laid off staff, forcing journalists into the government’s special COVID-19 job retention scheme or cutting their salaries by 10 to 20 per cent,” the report said.

Croatian PM Accused of ‘Shameful’ Accusations Against Journalist

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Andrej Plenkovic was accused of “shameful” behaviour for claiming during Monday’s pre-election debate on the private RTL channel that a journalist from the Croatian public broadcaster, Maja Sever, prepared his political rival Davor Bernardic for the televised showdown.

“Shameful behaviour by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who accused colleague Maja Sever of working for the [opposition] SDP [Social Democratic Party] during a debate with Davor Bernardic on RTL. Unworthy of the office of Prime Minister,” Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, wrote on Twitter.

Zovko also claimed that Plenkovic constantly accuses journalists of working for the opposition.

But Plenkovic told reporters on Tuesday that this was not an attack on Sever, who he said he respects.

“If anyone has a feeling for journalists, then I have,” Plenkovic said.

The long-awaited TV debate ahead of this Sunday’s elections saw the two likeliest candidates for the next prime minister face each other in the studio – Plenkovic from the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and Social Democratic Party, SDP president Bernardic.

During the debate, Plenkovic asked Bernardic if Sever prepared him for the show, because Bernardic came to the studio with a sheaf of documents, which included data and graphs that he tried to use to prove the failures of Plenkovic’s government.

Sever is president of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and a longtime journalist with Croatian public broadcaster HRT. She collaborates with the host and editor of the HRT talk show ‘Nedjeljom u dva’ (‘Sunday at 2 pm’), Aleksandar Stankovic, on which Plenkovic was a guest on June 14.

During that show, Stankovic confronted Plenkovic with some of his unfulfilled promises. Afterwards, according to media reports, Stankovic received criticism from his superiors for attacking the prime minister too much.

On Monday evening, Sever wrote on social media that before the HRT show on June 14, she and Stankovic prepared a few graphs and a list of Plenkovic’s statements and promises from the 2016 election campaign.

“It is an ordinary and simple journalistic job. I emphasise journalistic… The comments by the president of the HDZ [Plenkovic], who permits himself to say… that I was preparing someone for debate, is another attack by Andrej Plenkovic on independent journalism,” Sever wrote.

On June 23, Plenkovic also accused N1 TV journalist Hrvoje Kresic of agitating for the opposition after Kresic asked him if he would go into self-isolation when it was revealed that he had been in contact with tennis player Novak Djokovic, who was infected with coronavirus during a tennis tournament in Zadar in Croatia.

“I know you like to agitate for a team that you would like to not be in opposition, but in power,” Plenkovic told the N1 reporter. Kresic replied that he was not agitating but asking questions as a journalist.

The Croatian Journalists’ Association responded to this by saying that Plenkovic should stop making “inadmissible accusations against journalists who ask legitimate questions”.

“Journalists work neither for the government nor for the opposition, they work exclusively in the public interest,” the association said.

Facebook-Partnered Croatian Fact-Checkers Face “Huge Amount of Hatred”

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

A leading Croatian fact-checking site, which has partnered with Facebook to weed out misinformation on the platform, says it is facing “a huge amount of hatred” for the work it does, work that the site says has increased dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Croatian politicians, websites and users of social media have all taken aim at Faktograf in recent months, accusing it of censorship.

A member of the International Fact-Checking Network, IFCN, since 2017 and the only Croatian media specialised in verifying the accuracy of claims made in public, Faktograf says anti-vaccination groups are particularly sensitive to the debunking of fake news.

Since the onset of COVID-19, “The amount of misinforming content circulating on the internet has drastically increased as people spend more time on the internet, looking for answers to questions that bother them and trying to understand the sudden changes they see in the world around them,” said Faktograf editor-in-chief Petar Vidov.

“It’s mentally stressful to watch all day long how many people spread such misinformation, how fast such things are spreading, and then after all that, you get… a huge amount of hatred, threats, directed against Faktograf because of the work we do.”

“More or less, it is going well, but the problem is that there is that certain number of people you will never reach because they are simply grounded in their own beliefs for a long time, they reject argumented dialogue,” Vidov told BIRN in an interview.

So-called ‘anti-vaxxers’ perceive the debunking of fake news “as a threat to their agenda,” he said.

Falsely accused of ‘spying’ and deleting content


Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/LUONG THAI LINH.

Founded in 2015 by the Croatian Journalists’ Association and democracy advocates GONG, Faktograf last year became one of more than 20 organisations in 14 European Union countries partnering with Facebook in reviewing and rating the accuracy of articles posted on the social networking giant.

Social media users, online platforms and websites in Croatia say Faktograf is effectively censoring their opinions, a claim Vidov said was the result of a “misunderstanding of Facebook’s partnership with independent fact-checkers.”

“We do our job, we are debunking those inaccurate claims that spread in the public space and therefore we have our editorial policy, we determine what we will do,” he told BIRN.

“We prioritise things that endanger human health and that reach a large number of people.”

“Under the terms of that partnership, after we check some content and mark it as inaccurate, partially inaccurate or misinforming in some other way, for example through a fake headline, Facebook should reduce the reach of such content.”

Vidov stressed, however, that Faktograf had nothing to do with Facebook’s own removal of a wave of inaccurate content since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus at the start of the year.

“Faktograf has nothing to do with these removals, we are not working to remove that content, nor do we know which content is being removed.”

“However, people have developed this assumption that it is Faktograf that spies on their profiles and deletes their content from it.” Such assumptions are fuelling “unfounded” hostility towards Faktograf, he said.

Anti-vaxxers promoting conspiracy theories


A graffiti in Croatia’s capital that reads “Stop 5G”. Photo: BIRN. 

That has not stopped the likes of 34-year-old Croatian MP Ivan Pernar, who opposes vaccination, from taking to Facebook and YouTube on April 26 to criticise Faktograf, saying the site “determines what is true and censors those who think differently.”

In May, there were a number of small protests in Croatia calling for the suspension of all measures taken by the government to tackle the spread of COVID-19, to halt “violations of free speech” and a halt to the installation of a 5G wireless network “until it is proven not harmful.”

5G has become the focus of a widely-shared conspiracy theory linking the technology to the spread of the coronavirus. Faktograf has written extensively about the conspiracy theory and on Sunday, when another small protest was held in Zagreb against 5G one of those present held a banner describing those working for the site as “mercenaries.”

“At the very beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of information about fake drugs [for coronavirus], theories about how you can test yourself for coronavirus and so on – misinformation that spread primarily out of ignorance, out of the people’s need to get some orientation in all this,” Vidov said.

“But very quickly, conspiracy theories have taken over the story.”

“What we now mostly see is misinformation directed against vaccines,” he said, describing the anti-vaxxer movement in Croatia and the Balkan region as “quite strong”.

“They took over the narrative about the virus and managed to form it in the direction of a big conspiracy of global elites who want to chip the entire population to be controlled, and will do so through a vaccine against coronavirus.”

Fact-checkers playing catch-up


Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/HARISH TYAGI.

Vidov, who previously worked at online news site Index.hr, said those who spread misinformation are usually motivated by money.

“People simply make money from it because they generate traffic which they then monetize through advertising services like Google Ad Sense and the like,” he said. They themselves are rarely the originators of such narratives, but simply pick them up “most often from propagandists trying to achieve something.”

“The problem is that this misinformation, no matter how it is created… enters the system in which there are a large number of people who want to make money on this type of content and then they expand it and actually increase the reach of that damage, of that propaganda.”

Those who end up believing the misinformation are not “actors” but “victims” in the process, he said.

“Our education systems have not educated people well enough to be consumers and readers of media content, which is why we have a problem with the fact that unfortunately, a large number of people are not able to spot the difference between a credible and a non-credible source of information”.

The low level of public trust in domestic as well as international bodies is another major factor, Vidov argued.

Fact-checkers, he said, have a tough task in front of them.

“It is frustrating that it takes a lot more time to debunk inaccurate information than it takes to place any misinformation, no matter how stupid and unconvincing it may be.”

Erdogan’s Turkey Targets Remaining Media Critics

Posted on by BIRD

Already one of the biggest jailers of journalists in the world, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now turning the screws on the handful of independent media outlets left as the government seeks to silence criticism of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, media watchdogs and experts say.

Since a failed coup in mid-2016, authorities under Erdogan have closed 70 newspapers, 20 magazines, 34 radio stations and 33 television channels, accusing them of ties to ‘terrorism’ and the man they allege masterminded the abortive putsch, US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

A handful of independent outlets remain, but they too now face fresh pressure over their coverage of Turkey’s efforts to tackle the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus and its impact on the country’s already shaky economy.

The state broadcasting regulator, Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, recently fined several TV channels over their coverage of the government’s COVID-19 strategy, including FOX TV, broadcaster of Turkey’s most watched television news show anchored by Fatih Portakal.

On April 7, the regulator banned Portakal’s show for three days, accusing him of bias.

If FOX TV is fined once more for the same reason, it risks losing its licence. The broadcaster has appealed the decision but there has been no official response.

Erdogan has also weighed in personally, suing Portakal for spreading lies and manipulating the public. The anchor faces a potential prison sentence of three years.

“Some media and politicians are more dangerous than the virus,” Erdogan said on April 13. “They attack and criticise the government instead of supporting it in these difficult days, but our country will get rid of media and political viruses very soon.”

Critics of the government say it fears for its political future after losing a number of key Turkish cities to the opposition in local elections last year, with the economic crisis worsening since the onset of the pandemic.

Gokhan Durmus, General Secretary of the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, said the saga over Portakal and FOX was symptomatic of the government’s treatment of the press.

“The pressure and investigations against the media increased during the pandemic,” Durmus told BIRN. “In particular, media institutions and journalists who question or criticise government measures face a serious threat from the government via fines, legal investigations and blackmail.”

Government fears for its future – expert


A Turkish policeman with face mask blocks the main road during curfew in Istanbul, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOLGA BOZOGLU

With some 139,000 confirmed cases and 3,786 deaths as of May 11, Turkey has been hit hard by the pandemic, piling pressure on a government already struggling on the economic and political front.

Media watchdog Reporters without Borders ranks Turkey 154th out of 180 countries in terms of media freedom, characterising the country as “not free” on its Press Freedom Index.

According to this year’s Turkish Press Freedom Report, published on May 3, 85 journalists are in Turkish prisons and 103 journalists arrested and awaiting trial.

The report says that, between April 2019 and April 2020, RTUK applied administrative sanctions against television broadcasters in 20 cases and halted the broadcasting of 16 channels.

It also said that over 80 per cent of Turkish journalists believe they suffer from censorship and more than 78 per cent say they self-censor.

Mehmet Onur Cevik, an expert on Turkish media and politics at the University of Ghent in Belgium, said Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, already control 90 per cent of the media in Turkey.

“However,” he said, “the government left a small floor to a certain degree of independent and critical media as well as opposition parties.”

The AKP uses the existence of a small number of independent media outlets, as well as democratic elections, “to prove its political legitimacy against accusations of being authoritarian and oppressing its critics,” Cevik said.

“However, now things have changed because the economic crisis has deepened following the COVID-19 pandemic and people speak more about the government’s wrongdoings.”

The ruling party has gone on the offensive, he told BIRN, “since for the first time they fear for their political future. They fear that even news about the worsening economy can trigger a tsunami.”

Intolerance of criticism


A group of workers disinfect the Turkish Parliament General Assembly to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in Ankara, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/STR

RTUK and Turkey’s Press Ad Agency, BIK, which controls state advertising spending, are state institutions originally established to protect journalists, regulate their work and make sure media across the board are on a secure financial footing.

“However, in the last two years, these institutions started to do what the government wants and they turned into the government’s hammer,” said Durmus.

“Journalists face continuous legal investigations and the penalties from Turkish state institutions such as RTUK and intensified in recent years. Just during the pandemic, 13 journalists have been detained because of their coverage.”

“The government does not want to hear anything that differs from its own opinion,” said Durmus. “With these recent penalties and continuous pressure, the government indirectly told journalists that they will be fined if they say anything critical about the government’s policies.”

After years of economic crisis, the government has been caught short on firepower to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and is trading political blows with opposition-run cities.

In what critics say is a blatant bid to control the narrative, the government announced new legislation on May 7 concerning ‘manipulation’ of financial markets and targeting allegedly “deceptive” news about the economy.

It has also tabled to parliament a new law on digital rights, to the alarm of rights groups which say it will increase government control over social media platforms and potentially force some to quit the country.

“The AKP had never been so uncomfortable with independent media, social media and the opposition, because it feels that its rule is being threatened,” said Cevik.

“So they target the media, opposition and whoever thinks differently, even at the cost of losing legitimacy.”

COVID-19 Worsening Environment for Media Freedom, Report Warns

Posted on by BIRD

Journalists across Eastern Europe, the Balkans but, increasingly also in Western Europe, faced a new level of threats, harassment and risk of imprisonment during 2019, according to the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists, in a report presented on Wednesday by 14 organisations partnered in the platform.

The report, “Attacks on media in Europe Must Not Become the New Normal”, states that about 140 alerts were filed with the platform during 2019, including 103 from Turkey, 21 from Serbia and 11 from Albania.

A disputed media law in Albania proposed by Prime Minister Edi Rama last year, the closure of the last remaining critical TV shows and the harassment of journalists by pro-government media resulted in Albania getting a separate chapter in the report, meaning also that Albania was added to the list of countries of special concern.

Sarah Clarke, from Article 19, said the report noted SLAPP cases as a major concern. These Strategic Litigations Against Public Participation are lawsuits against journalists or activists in which plaintiffs use their financial power to drag critics into lengthy court processes that then encourage others in the media to practise self-censorship.

“There has been an elevated threat from the political level and juridical harassment against journalists. We included SLAPPS as a concern for the first time,” Clarke said.

Meanwhile, the new coronavirus pandemic has caused a whole new set of concerns, said Scott Griffen, from the International Press Institute. He said there had been a systemic attempt by several governments to control the narrative of the pandemic, referring to Hungary and other states.

“Hungary has criminalized the distribution of ‘distorted facts’”, Griffen said, adding that this could amount to a “criminalization of journalism”. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Serbia have also seen arrests for reports on the spread of the new coronavirus that annoyed the authorities.

Ricardo Gutierrez, General Secretary of European Federation of Journalists, said the collapse of advertising revenues in the media across Europe due to COVID-19 had left thousands of journalists unemployed and left tens of thousands of freelancers without any real income. “COVID-19 is causing a global collapse of press freedom,” Gutierrez warned.

William Horsley, from the Association of European Journalists, said media ownership was another worrying issue. Standards were deteriorating across the continent, he said, urging EU member states to “be particularly strict over its standards”.

“There is an increasing shift of media ownership toward governments and governments partners, the so-called oligarchs,” Horsley noted.

Bulgaria was singled out as a country where the media has been captured by oligarchs. “A major share of the country’s newspaper distribution business is under the control of a single conglomerate, owned by a politician. Independent journalists and media outlets are regularly subject to intimidation in person and online,” the report noted. Meanwhile, out of 135 journalists currently jailed or under detention, 91 of these are in Turkey.

Croatian Journalists Hit by Coronavirus Austerity: Union Chief

Posted on by BIRD

“The crisis has affected journalists, so salaries have already been cut at a number of media outlets,” the president of Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, Maja Sever, a longtime journalist with Croatian public broadcaster HRT, told BIRN in an interview.

Sever noted that some outlets have cut employees’ salaries by 50 per cent, and that “some media did it even before the financial indicators showed that something like this should be done”.

She recalled how the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and the Croatian Journalists’ Association warned the government that measures must be taken to safeguard journalism soon after the crisis began, but did not receive a meaningful response.

For this reason, she believes that the role of the journalists’ union, as well as unions in general, is more important than ever.

“Under labour law, it is the union that has the legal basis to negotiate with an employer about possible cutbacks. Basically, it’s the one institution that we have with which we can fight for our rights, even in crisis situations like this, but also in situations where we are not in some kind of crisis,” Sever said.

Government should protect media workers


Maja Sever, the president of Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, on a meeting with Croatian President Zoran Milanovic. Photo: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia.

According to a survey by the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and the Croatian Journalists’ Association, less than a month into the crisis, as many as 28 per cent of Croatian freelance journalists and part-time media employees were left without any media work, 26 per cent lost most of their engagements, and 16 per cent of them lost half of their engagements.

This shows that more freelancers should be unionised, said Sever: “This crisis has shown how unprotected they are; their contracts are simply cancelled and that’s it.”

Both journalists’ organisations have argued that measures taken by the government to support the economy during the pandemic have mainly aided entrepreneurs and commercial publishers.

To avoid more redundancies among journalists and other media workers, they suggested that the measures to safeguard solvency and employment should be urgently extended to all media.

More than a month after these warnings, Sever and Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, met separately on Thursday with Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Korzinek, whose ministry is responsible for the media sector.

“The president, in principle, was talking with us and supporting our efforts. [But] he does not have the mechanisms or authority to do such a thing [impose measures to save journalism],” Sever said.

“As far as the minister is concerned… I cannot say that there have been any developments that we have agreed upon, but the fact is that we have begun talks on some topics and started to talk specifically about how to help freelance journalists,” she continued, adding that it is necessary to speed up the disbursement of EU aid funds which will “certainly help many non-profit media”.

Although the Croatian government has enacted a job-saving measure that gives financial assistance to employers to retain employees, Sever warned that the criteria for receiving state aid are related to bans on layoffs, not bans on wage cuts.

Commenting on the meeting with the journalists’ organisations, Obuljen Korzinek told Jutarnji list newspaper on Sunday that “there have already been a number of government measures adopted to assist the economy concerning the media” and that talks continue with journalists’ associations about supporting independent journalists.

Press freedom still endangered


A man wearing a protective face mask reads a newspaper in Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Sever argued that Croatian journalists, who are now facing a major threat to their health while covering the coronavirus crisis in the country, are underappreciated.

“For the first week of the crisis, we made a huge effort [to raise awareness] that journalists must be protected… We also wrote to the ministries, to the employers. Then we procured the protective equipment by ourselves and sent it to the people who asked for it,” she recalled.

The union also called for press conferences to be held in a way that would protect the participants from possible infection.

“Unlike most of our fellow citizens who were able to stay home with their families, we journalists go to our job every day, exposing ourselves and our families to health hazards,” she continued, adding that part-time media workers and freelance journalists do not have proper health insurance coverage.

Meanwhile, she added, “journalists are still exposed to attacks”.

At Catholic Easter, on April 14, when a journalist from the local news website Dalmatinski Portal and a camera operator from N1 TV tried to report on an Easter mass being held in defiance of social distancing measures at a church in Sirobuja, a suburb of Split, they were physically attacked by several men.

On the same day in Sirobuja, a rally was held by masked, black-clad protesters to support the priest who had called on worshippers to attend the mass. Two of the protesters displayed World War II fascist Ustasa movement’s insignia and a banner with the slogan “Journalists are worms”.

According to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, Croatia has improved its press freedom status and is now ranked 59th in the world, whereas in 2019 was ranked 64the. A lower score indicates greater press freedom, but Sever described it as “small progress”.

“We are still in a society that is not known for media freedom. I think we would have to do a lot more, but unfortunately [from] large operations like public media to some kind of support for independent journalism and non-profit media, in principle we are failing to make any significant steps,” she said.

“Politicians still like to have some influence on the big mainstream media and this is really felt in this crisis,” she continued.

Sever dismissed the suggestion that Croatia should take comfort in the fact that, as far as media freedom is concerned, the country is doing better than some of its ex-Yugoslav neighbours.

“Why don’t we compare ourselves to countries that are just a little north of our geographical location and then see how we stand with press freedom?” she asked.

‘It’ll be Bloody’: Under Jansa, Troubled Times for Slovenian Media

Posted on by BIRD

The spread of COVID-19 and the return to power of veteran right-winger Janez Jansa are contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists in Slovenia, media watchdogs are warning.

Jansa, an anti-immigration ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, returned for a third stint as prime minister on March 13, a little over a week after Slovenia confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus that has since killed 79 people in the former Yugoslav republic.

He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January. The change of power coincided with what the International Press Institute, IPI, says is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.

Jansa himself has taken to Twitter to denounce the Slovenian public broadcaster; his government has sought to portray mainstream media outlets as heirs of the Yugoslav-era communist security services, while the government’s Crisis Headquarters tasked with coordinating the fight against COVID-19 has retweeted anonymous attacks on investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.

“This is, in a way, a defeat in the field of democracy,” said Slovenian political scientist Alem Maksuti. “[Slovenian] media are coming under tremendous pressure, while like any other media they must simply objectively inform the public what’s going on.”

“And once again this thesis has emerged that authoritarian regimes which want to establish greater power are taking on those who have different opinions,” Maksuti told BIRN.

Governments exploiting pandemic to curb media freedoms


A cyclist wearing protective mask passes in the almost empty Preseren square, in Ljubljana. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

In mid-March, Zgaga, an investigative reporter and correspondent for the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, complained to IPI that he had been the target of a smear article in a news weekly close to Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, after he had asked the government about the operations and structure of a newly-founded Crisis Headquarters created by the government to lead the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Headquarters did not respond. Instead, its official Twitter account retweeted an anonymous attack on Zgaga describing him as having “escaped from quarantine” and carrying a “COVID-Marx/Lenin virus,” a play on a common smear by the Slovenian right-wing against its opponents on the left or centre. Zgaga also received anonymous, online death threats.

On April 17, RSF and six other press freedom organisations urged the European Commission – the executive arm of the European Union, of which Slovenia is a member – to do everything in its power to guarantee the safety of the Zgaga and ensure that “death threats and attacks against him are treated with the utmost seriousness by the Slovenian authorities.”

“Despite the unprecedented context in which Slovenia and other countries currently find themselves, the COVID-19 crisis shouldn’t be an excuse to prevent journalists from doing their job,” RSF said, echoing the deep concern felt by media watchdogs over press freedoms across Central and Eastern Europe since the onset of the pandemic.

‘Unjustified attacks’ on public broadcaster


Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology Zdravko Pocivalsek speaks to the media during the reception of the first batch of a seven-ton shipment of personal protection equipment from Quingdao, China. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

Zgaga, however, was not the only target.

On March 20, the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists reported that Jansa had used social media to accuse public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Slovenija, RTVS, of spreading lies about the government. He issued a veiled threat over its funding.

RTVS Director General Igor Kadunc denounced what he said were “grossly unjustified attacks” on RTVS coverage aimed to the “subordination of the central media to one political option.”

Spela Stare, secretary general of the Slovene Association of Journalists, DNS, noted that at the outset of the pandemic, the government had sought to halt journalists from asking questions at its regular COVID-19 press conferences. RTVS was supposed to simply broadcast the statements of speakers.

“Journalists could only send the questions in advance via email. No real-time questions,” Stare told BIRN. “We protested, of course, and demanded at least video conferences for questions.”

The government backed down, to a degree, allowing journalists to pose questions from a separate location or submit them in advance.

“Not ideal, but better than what was first announced,” Stare said, while noting that the opportunity for follow-up questions had clearly become limited.

For Slovenian media, trouble ahead


Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Not long after the protest from the Council of Europe’s protection of journalism platform, a reply appeared on the platform’s site from Slovenia’s mission to the CoE, questioning the journalistic standards of Slovenian media and claiming that “the majority of the main media in Slovenia have their origins in the former Communist regime and even in the late 1990s the positions of editors-in-chief were held by the former members of the infamous security service UDBA.”

The Slovene Association of Journalists denounced the letter as having “no basis in reality.”

“It only reflects the ideological views of the biggest government party and smears Slovenia’s reputation internationally,” the association said.

Maksuti said the government was trying to “invent an enemy that has been dead for years – Communism.”

Foreign Minister Anze Logar defended the wording of the response, which he said was drawn up by a government communications office, telling parliament that the government had faced significant criticism in the media in its first month in office.

Journalists he ran into, Logar said, “do not seem scared… I did not see fear in their eyes.”

With the next parliamentary election due in 2022, Maksuti said the future of Jansa’s four-party coalition government was hard to predict.

“I think politics will be closer to what we can see in Hungary, Poland or Slovakia,” he said, “where some of the civilisational steps we’ve made are becoming issues again – abortion, same-sex marriage and so on.”

Jansa’s government is working on a package of laws, part of which Maksuti said may seek to abolish licence fees for the public broadcaster and give more prominence and improved frequencies to media seen, he said, as “party extensions” of Jansa’s SDS.

“In the media field, it’ll be bloody,” Maksuti said.

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