Media freedom Archives - Page 17 of 18

Moldova Authorities Accused of Lacking Transparency About Pandemic

Posted on March 23, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Media NGOs in Moldova signed a common protest on Sunday, accusing the authorities of lacking transparency about the scale of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

“Non-governmental organisations in the media ask the state authorities and institutions to ensure correct and professional collaboration with media institutions, refraining from unfounded accusations and insinuations against journalists who request public interest information to inform objectively and completely,” the petition signed by eight media NGOs says.

It comes after two cases of infected doctors from different hospitals were reported on March 19 and March 22. The authorities did not confirm them in the first phase, however. Only media outlets reported about them.

The authorities have also avoided giving out precise data on medical supply stocks and specific numbers related to the pandemic.

“They have blamed the press for criticism but, in fact, they do not offer complete information about the epidemiological crisis … The Prime Minister and President have responded harshly to reactions of media outlets who were trying to find out more information,” Cornelia Cozonac, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Moldova, told BIRN.

She said journalists are forbidden to ask live questions during press briefings on the pandemic, and even those who are allowed to ask written questions do not get straight answers.

“It is not normal in this crisis. The authorities need to be much more open because they are asking citizens to cooperate as well. We, as journalists, want the authorities to be responsible, and to provide as accurate information as possible and to answer journalists’ questions to better inform the citizens,” she added.

Moldovan media have called on the authorities to at least organise video conferences with free Q&A sessions. No response has come as yet to this suggestion.

On March 19, the authorities opened a free online platform to present the numbers of infected cases in every district of the country, but on Monday, after the technical suspension of the website, it required a user and password.

President Igor Dodon on Monday at a press briefing accused some media of trying to “make a show” about the public health situation in Moldova.

“For some media sources that lately are trying to speculate and get things out of context – when I said there are 2,000 places ready [in hospitals], then that means there are that many. When we said that there are only 500 [ventilator] machines in Chisinau, someone tried to interpret that as are only 500 [bed] places. It is not correct. Of 94 [coronavirus] cases, only two needed these devices,” he said.

Both Dodon and Prime Minister Ion Chicu and his communication team have repeatedly accused the media of not properly informing the population.

However, on March 16, when an entire village was put under quarantine after the authorities held elections in the Hincesti district, amid the pandemic, the media only found that out by itself.

Bosnia’s Republika Srpska Imposes Fines for Coronavirus ‘Fake News’

Posted on March 19, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The government of the Republika Srpska issued a decree on Thursday that forbids causing “panic and disorder” during a state of emergency, Interior Minister Dragan Lukac told a press conference.

“In recent days, we have had various comments on social networks by irresponsible people who create fake news and cause panic and fear among citizens, which can cause various consequences,” Lukac said.

He added that “during an emergency, it is forbidden to publish false news and allegations that cause panic and severely disrupt public order and peace or prevent the implementation of measures by institutions exercising public authority”.

The government ruling covers the publication and transmission of false news by the media and on social networks.

“[Wrongdoers] will not be able to hide, even on social networks; we will find them,” Lukac said.

Individuals who are proved to have caused panic and spread false news will be fined between 1,000 and 3,000 Bosnian marks (between 500 and 1,500 euros), and firms between 3,000 and 9,000 marks (between 1,500 and 4,500 euros).

Bulgarian Investigative Journalist Attacked by Masked Men

Posted on March 18, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Bulgarian Interior Ministry suggested on Wednesday that the attack on investigative journalist and editor Slavi Angelov on Sofia’s central Dondukov Boulevard could be related to his work.

“Most likely it is an attempted assassination,” Ivaylo Ivanov, the Interior Ministry’s chief secretary, told Nova TV.

Angelov was beaten up late on Tuesday by three people – two of them hit him with metal sticks, while the third filmed the assault.

Angelov’s condition is currently stable and he has been questioned by police.

The Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria condemned the attack, as did fellow journalists and political parties.

“AEJ-Bulgaria insists on a prompt and effective investigation. The authorities must detect, bring to justice and punish both the actual perpetrators and those who ordered this brutal act,” the Association of European Journalists – Bulgaria said in a statement on Wednesday.

Angelov was a crime reporter for the newspaper 24 Hours for a long period and has been writing about Bulgaria’s underworld since the mid-1990s.

He is also the author of several non-fiction books and has been editor-in-chief of weekly newspaper 168 Hours since 2012.

Rama Takes his War on Media to Albanians’ Phones

Posted on March 13, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Albanian mobile phone users have unexpectedly received a recorded message from the Prime Minister, advising them on how to protect themselves from the coronavirus – and the media.

“Wash your hands, don’t move from your house for pleasure, open windows as much as you can, protect yourself from the media,” the message from Edi Rama said.

However often mobile phone users called, they had to listen to the message again, as there was no way of silencing it.

Users of Telekom Albania mobile network got a slightly different message, merely advising them to protect themselves from false information.

The media is an old target for the Socialist premier, who over the years has seen his image tarnished by reports of links with organised crime, of controversial public contracts awarded to local companies without competition and of other scandals involving misuse of public funds.

Rama has often attempted to deflect the blame by running a war against the media, and claiming all the allegations against him are manufactured lies.

He once called Voice of America the voice of “the garbage bin” and more lately, he sued the German tabloid Bild for defamation, over leaked tapes that apparently showed close collaboration between Socialist politicians and underworld figures in vote buying and pressuring public officials to vote for the party.

Last November, as the country faced another crisis caused by an earthquake – and faced with questions over government preparedness against natural calamities – Rama threatened unnamed media with closure, claiming he would use extraordinary powers against those who “spread panic”.

Albania is now facing one of the most serious crises in its recent history as the economy goes into freefall thanks to the stringent restrictions Rama has put in place to slow down the spread of the coronavirus.

The PM recently attempted to push forward law changes to create a regulatory body for online media, which has proven more difficult to control than the conventional TV networks that operate through government-awarded permits. The law has been blocked amid intense international pressure, however.

North Macedonia Web Portals Hustle for Election Ads Cash

Posted on March 10, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The prospect of making a quick buck from budget money intended for election advertising has encouraged a staggering 235 web portals, many with obscure backgrounds and identities, to register at the State Electoral Commission, DIK, for a slice of the pie.

BIRN’s analysis of the DIK list of web portals, published in Macedonian language, reveals that many have questionable professional standards and unclear backgrounds and ownership.

Of the 235 web portals that have registered, 92 do not reveal who the journalists and editors who work there are. Of those 92, effectively hiding their staff teams, 44 publish political news; the rest cover other topics, or have no clear theme.

Most of the portals that did disclose their journalistic teams are run by just one or two persons, it was also noticed. There are also cases where one team of journalists works in several portals.

There is no data about the owners or founders of 19 of the portals that have applied for state cash. They are registered in the United States, Panama, or in other places, by companies that conceal their true owners.

Some 50 of the portals are not even registered with the web domain .mk. Some resemble blogs rather than news sites, and have domains such as .live, .info or just .com.

The April 12 general elections are the second in North Macedonia in which the state budget will cover political party adverts in the media.

North Macedonia introduced this practice for last year’s presidential elections, when 83 portals registered for the cash.

The law allows parties to apply or up to two euros for every voter who voted for them in the last elections. The state plans to reserve about 3.6 million euros for this purpose.

While it is expected that most of this sum will be spent on ads on TV and radio and in newspapers, the rules allow one party or alliance also to spend up to 15,000 euros for promotional purposes in a single portal.

The more portals a publisher registers, the bigger its potential gain.

The head of the State-Anti-Corruption Commission, Biljana Ivanovska, was among the first to warn about the problems arising from these loopholes.

In an interview for BIRN, in Macedonian language, in January, she said only web portals that are already registered with the National Council for the Media, SEMM, should be allowed to register at the DIK list as well.

At the moment, the SEMM register contains 101 web portals that have disclosed ownership and journalistic teams, as well as known price lists. They have also pledged to respect professional and ethical codes.

But when parliament last made changes to the electoral law, last month, it ignored this advice and left the situation as is, meaning that any web portal can be registered without scrutiny.

More than half of all the web portals that have registered for part of the state advertising cash are not on the SEMM list.

Among the analysed data from the current DIK register, BIRN observed other curiosities. In few cases, for example, a single publisher has registered several versions of the same portal.

The publisher Prva Republika [First Republic], for example, has registered its site “Republika” three times, counting Macedonian, Albanian and the English versions of the same site as three separate sites. The web site of TV 21, which airs in Albanian and Macedonian, is similarly registered twice.

The DIK register shows a similar trend in several smaller towns, like Ohrid, Kriva Palanka, Delcevo, Valandovo and others, where the same local publishers have registered more than one web portal.

To maximize potential profits, some of the big national TV stations have also registered their websites separately from their TV stations. Some newspapers and many local radio and TV stations have done the same.

Apart from informative portals, the list also shows that sites that follow sports, lifestyle, and automotive industry have also been registered.

Turkey Arrests Journalists Over Reports on Turkish Intel Agent’s Funeral

Posted on March 9, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

A court in Istanbul ruled on Sunday to arrest Murat Agırel, a columnist with Yenicag Daily newspaper, and Yeni Yasam managing editor Ferhat Celik and editor-in-chief Aydın Keser over news reports on the funeral of a high-ranking intelligence officer who was killed in Libya.

Turkish prosecutors in Istanbul had previously launched an investigation against the journalists for exposing the identity of a field officer with the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) who served and died in Libya, where Turkey has been supporting the government in Tripoli against a rival eastern faction.

OdaTV news director Barıs Terkoglu and journalist Hulya Kılıc were also arrested on Friday after the outlet ran a news report and images of the funeral in Manisa province.

The court also ruled to block access to OdaTV’s website.

The prosecutor’s office said the journalists revealed information on intelligence activities and documents and that they put intelligence officers’ families and colleagues in danger.

However, the name of the MIT agent had previously been announced by Turkish lawmakers in parliament.

“You cannot escape from the responsibility of what you have done with pressuring the media,” Faik Oztrak, a spokesperson for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told reporters on Friday.

The CHP and other opposition parties condemned the court ruling as politically motivated and an attack on press freedom.

The arrested journalists are known to be critical of the Turkish government.

The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has deployed troops to Libya to support the UN-recognised National Accord Government in the capital, Tripoli, against the Libyan National Army, which backs a rival interim government based in the eastern port city of Tobruk.

Critics accuse the Turkish government of hiding the real number of soldiers and other public officers killed in conflicts in Libya and Syria.

Turkish media previously reported that a high-ranking colonel in the Turkish army was killed in Libya but he was buried in Turkey without any ceremony in a bid to avoid public anger.

Eighty-four journalists are currently behind bars, making Turkey one of the biggest jailers of journalists in the world. Media watchdog Reporters without Borders ranks Turkey 157th out of 180 countries on its Press Freedom Index.

Since a failed coup in 2016, Turkish authorities have closed 70 newspapers, 20 magazines, 34 radio stations and 33 television channels as part of Erdogan’s crackdown on his critics.

Hungarian Editors Need Permission to Report on ‘Sensitive’ Topics

Posted on March 2, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Brussels-based website Politico has obtained several internal emails that confirm the long-suspected growth of censorship in Hungary’s state media.

State-owned outlets have a big role in the Hungarian media, as they include several TV and radio stations and MTI, the only Hungarian news agency.

According to the leaked emails, state media bosses need special permission from “higher above” to report on topics like Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish climate activist.

Reports on several other “sensitive” topics, such as migration, European terrorism, Brussels, church issues and on parliamentary, presidential and local elections in the “EU+” (member states and neighboring countries) also need to be sent for final approval.

Journalists in the state media don’t know who makes the final decisions on the articles whose subject matter is on the list, Politico says.

The emails obtained by the outlet date from the second half of October 2019 and are signed by senior editors of the state media. One of them is Sándor Végh.

The emails appear to focus on news coverage. Emails also confirm that several topics were banned explicitly from mention in the Hungarian state media – as it was reported previously by Népszava, a Hungarian daily.

Journalists are not allowed to report on Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, NGOs that are critical of the Hungarian government’s politics, especially its hostile policies on refugees and migrants.

It also turned out that reporting on Thunberg is not always allowed. An email that ordered staffers to ask permission to report on her was sent on August 14, when the activist started her trip to New York to speak at the United Nations. Hungarian state media did not publish anything about Thunberg’s trip.

The World Press Freedom Index compiled by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders classifies Hungary’s media as only “partly free”. The country is now ranked in 87th place, and the pressure on the free press is clearly getting stronger. Last year Hungary was 73rd on the list, while in 2010, when the current government gained power, it ranked in 23rd place.

Senator Sees China’s Hand in Central Europe TV Sale

Posted on February 28, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

US Republican Senator Marco Rubio has asked the US Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General to launch “a full review of the national security implication of AT&T’s upcoming sale of the Central European Media Group Enterprises, CME, to the Czech-owned conglomerate PPF Group”.

AT&T is a US multinational telecommunications conglomerate and the largest shareholder at the CME. The owner of the PPF Group is Czech tycoon Peter Kellner, whom the Florida Senator accused of being a “China proxy”.

In 2018, Petr Kellner was set to buy Bulgaria’s largest media company, Nova Broadcasting, which owns some of the most popular commercial TV channels in the country, but the Bulgarian competition commission blocked the deal.

If PPF buys the CME, it will take control of popular TV channels in several Central European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia. It channels, including rating market leaders ProTV in Romania and bTV in Bulgaria, reach an audience of 97 million people, according to Rubio’s letter.

Rubio said this was potentially worrying. “The administration needs to conduct closer reviews of corporate deals like … [the] sale of CME, and understand how the Chinese government and Communist Party work through proxies like PPF,” he said.

Rubio, who co-chairs the Congressional Executive Commission on China, CECC, and is a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, warned of the threat that “the Chinese Communist Party’s political interference in foreign governments and societies” could pose to the countries where CME operates.

He argued that the sale would affect US national security, as Washington’s priorities include “preserving a free and open media environment overseas as well as preventing the Chinese Communist Party from subverting these platforms”.

US legislation authorises investigations of mergers, acquisitions and takeovers when “the acquirer is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government” and when “the acquisition results in control of a person .. that could affect the national security of the United States.”

In Rubio’s view, the PPF Group already has “a record of acting as China’s proxies inside the Czech Republic” and its financial ties to China were clear.

“Approximately one-third of the PPF Group’s profits come from subsidiary Home Credit’s individual lending businesses in China,” the letter stated, adding that this “politically precarious business relies” on Beijing’s non-banking loans license.

The Senator claimed that Beijing uses the company to support “China’s malign activities abroad”. One example he cited involves Serbia, where he said that “PPF-owned telecommunications firms are working with Huawei to develop 5G networks”.

He also claimed that PPF subsidiary Home Credit “hired a public relations firm for 2,000 hours work devoted to manipulating Czech public opinion favorably toward China”.

This included “spying on Czech politicians, pressuring media to withdraw news articles critical of China and creating a new think-tank, Sinoskop, to employ biased analysts to influence public debate”.

INSI: Decline in 2019 Media Workers’ Deaths as They Pull Back from Deadly Conflicts

Posted on February 25, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

According to the annual report “Killing the Messenger,” published last Friday by London-based International News Safety Institute, INSI, a total of 48 journalists died in 2019 in incidents and accidents directly related to their work, the lowest number in 16 years.

That does not, however, mean journalists are now safer while doing their jobs, said INSI director Elena Cosentino.

“The decline in casualties was simply because fewer journalists reported from conflict zones in the first place,” Cosentino said.

“Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan were deemed simply too dangerous for either local or international media to cover and were dropped from many outlets’ news agenda.”

The deadliest country for media workers in 2019 was Mexico, with 12 reporters killed, followed by Tanzania (5), Afghanistan (4), Syria (4), Honduras (3) and Somalia (3).

Last year also marked the first time in 21 years that no journalist was killed in a foreign country, which comes as a result of media organisations pulling back their staff from the most dangerous places.

All 48 causalities in 2019 were local journalists reporting from their home countries, and the majority of them died while reporting on crime, politics and corruption by unknown perpetrators.

The past year proved partially successful in terms of investigations into the murders of some prominent journalists, including “significant legal developments in the killings of Ján Kuciak from Slovakia; Saudi Arabia’s Jamal Kashoggi; and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta,” the report said.

Slovak investigative reporter Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, were shot dead in their home in February 2018. The trial of four people accused of the brutal killing started in mid-January, while in December another accused was sentenced to 15 years in jail in a separate trial.

Jamal Kashoggi, a Saudi dissident and journalist, entered the Consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul in October 2018 and never came out. At first, Saudi Arabia denied having anything to do with the reporter’s disappearance, but then the authorities finally acknowledged that their own officials were behind the murder. The whereabouts of his body is still unknown.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist, writer, and anti-corruption activist who was killed in a car bombing near her home in 2017. Last November, the case saw an important development when the main suspect and alleged sponsor of the crime was arrested. He then accused Keith Schembri, the chief of staff of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, of ordering the assassination.

The murder, like that of Kuciak in Slovakia, sparked mass protests that forced the prime ministers of both countries to resign.

However, INSI said that the legal developments happened thanks to the enormous pressure brought by Caruana Galizia’s family and international media coverage.

“Daphne’s case proves that with enough time and pressure even the most powerful could one day be held to account,” Cosentino said.

“As happened in Malta, raising the cost of killing a journalist is the ultimate aim for everyone in the news industry. Despite the progress made in 2019, that still feels like a long way off.”

Serbia Urged to Come Clean on Journalists’ Surveillance

Posted on February 20, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, has called on the Serbian authorities to investigate how much surveillance goes on in the country – after the Serbian news agency Tanjug on February 16 published a response written by the Defence Minister to a never-published opinion piece by a former defence minister.

The former defence minister and current opposition politician Dragan Sutanovac emailed his article on defence issues to the editor of the weekly Nedeljnik, Veljko Lalic, which decided not to run it.

RSF noted its concern that current minister Aleksandar Vulin felt able to respond to the unpublished material – and that he had said in his article that he was replying to the article Sutanovic had published in Nedeljnik.

On February 19, RSF’s European bureau chief, Pauline Adès-Mével, called on the Serbian authorities to investigate whether opposition politicians were being spied on.

“We are concerned that emails between opposition politicians and independent media outlets are being spied on and intercepted by the government,” Adès-Mével said.

“We call on the authorities to shed all possible light on this matter,” the press release added.

After the news broke, Vulin apologized to Nedeljnik and said he would ask the relevant bodies to look into the matter. Vulin’s staff later said its PR team had mistaken Nedeljnik for Kurir, a Belgrade-based tabloid that recently published an interview with Sutanovac.

But in his response article, Vulin only referred to Sutanovac’s comments about Serbia-Russia cooperation, which the unpublished piece contained, and was not mentioned in the Kurir interview.

Nedeljnik also said the authorities needed to find out whether any officials used the resources of the secret services to intercept emails between Sutanovac and Lalic.

“It is hard to believe that a person working constantly with the media, for example, someone in the defence ministry’s public relations department, would confuse the daily Kurir with the weekly Nedeljnik,” the weekly said.

This, however, is not the first time that concern about surveillance of politicians and journalists has arisen in Serbia.

In March 2016, the tabloid Informer published some of the findings of an investigation into the assets of Aleksandar Vucic – now president of Serbia, who was then prime minister – which the investigative website Krik had carried out but never published.

Serbia has been falling for years in the rankings of the World Press Freedom Index. It was ranked in 90^th place out of 180 countries in the 2019 Index.

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