Category: Media freedom

Attacks on Critical Journalists’ Property in Bosnia’s Banja Luka Condemned

Posted on by BIRD

The Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina has condemned the attacks on the vehicles of two journalists from Banja Luka, a day after they criticised a law that threatens freedom of speech.

The attacks on the cars of two journalists from Banja Luka, administrative centre of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, discovered early on March 9, a day after they criticised a new law on defamation, was “extremely worrying,” the Delegation stated. 

Nikola Moraca, journalist of EruoBlic and SrpskaInfo, and Aleksandar Trifunovic, editor-in-chief of online magazine Buka, found their cars damaged in the same neighbourhood where they both live. 

“It is yet another example of the difficult conditions that journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina operate in, and the ongoing hostile environment for media freedom in the country,” the EU office added. 

A day prior to the attack, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik slammed those who criticised a proposed law which would criminalise defamation, imposing huge financial fines, naming several individuals, including Moraca and Trifunovic. 

“This is a typical attempt at intimidation; the day after Dodik called us scoundrels and marked targets, it was only a matter of time before someone would interpret this as an instruction,” Trifunovic posted on Twitter after discovering the damage. 

“Verbal attacks by political leaders that seek to discredit journalists can also contribute to increased hostility and risks for them,” the UN mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina wrote on Twitter, among many reactions by local and international human rights and media organisations.

Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, condemned the attack on Thursday but also suggested they had “organised” the damage to their cars themselves.

“The government is asking for an imminent police reaction and prosecution of the perpetrators,” he said, adding in the same sentence: “There are some indications that they have organised the attack by themselves, and we will see if it is correct or not.” 

“So the investigation has not officially even begun, and Dodik seems to want to help solve the case by accusing us,” Trifunovic shared on social media on Thursday evening. 

The EU Delegation recalled that freedom of expression and freedom of media are among 14 key reform priorities for Bosnia, as stated in the European Commission’s Opinion on the country’s EU membership application.

“In any democratic society, journalists must be able to do their important work without fear or intimidation,” the EU office said. 

CoE Platform Records Continued Degradation in Press Freedom in 2022

Posted on by BIRD

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine occurred against the backdrop of a continued degradation in press freedom across Europe in 2022 and it has had far-reaching consequences for the continent’s journalism, according to the annual report published by the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists.

The platform, which through alerts submitted by partner organisations seeks to document the serious threats to the safety of journalists and media freedom in Europe, said in its report published on Tuesday that 289 alerts were posted in 2022 concerning 37 countries, a figure comparable to that of 2021, which saw 282 alerts.

At one end of the scale, apart from the 12 journalists and media workers who died on active duty covering Russia’s war in Ukraine, the platform recorded one journalist killed in the exercise of their work, Gungor Arslan in Turkey, compared to four who died the previous year outside of a war zone. Yet there was a 60 per cent rise to 127 in the number of journalists in prison at the end of 2022 in Europe.

At the other end of the scale, continuing unabated were the harassment and smear campaigns, both online and offline, targeting journalists; the rise in surveillance; the continued use of abusive court proceedings; and the use of the war as ammunition for governments trying to restrict journalists’ right to report on matters considered national security.

Harassment, intimidation and smear campaigns have become a “new normal” up to the point that some journalists no longer even report them, noted the report titled “War in Europe and the Fight for the Right to Report”. A total of 94 alerts were posted on the platform, compared with 110 in 2021. The highest number of cases were recorded in Russia, but also in Serbia, Italy, Poland, Croatia and Greece.

“Press freedom in Europe continues to be undermined by restrictive legislation,” Flutura Kusari, senior legal advisor for the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) told a press conference. “Surveillance, the fight against disinformation, legislation on state secrets or the fight against terrorism are all used to pressure journalists.”

This is the third year that the annual report has dedicated a chapter to the rising use of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and other legal actions aimed at intimidating and silencing journalists, which have become a favourite tool of powerful individuals and corporations. At least 20 defamation and other types of legal proceedings were documented against journalists in 2022, with hundreds of thousands of euros sought in damages in the name of reputational harm.

The European Commission published a directive last year in which it tasked the Council of the EU and European Parliament to develop anti-SLAPP legislation to protect journalists, activists, academics, and others from legal battles intended to stop their work. “Now is the time for member states to start taking actions against SLAPPS,” said Kusari.

The threats posed to journalists and their sources from surveillance increased in 2022 as fresh allegations and evidence emerged about the abuse of sophisticated spyware tools by governments in the region.

Particularly noteworthy cases occurred in Hungary, where investigations continued into the use of Pegasus by state intelligence agencies to surveil at least five journalists and media owners. And in Greece, 2022 saw the emergence of a new spyware product, Predator, with revelations about its use to surveil journalist Thanasis Koukakis, as well as leading politicians. On November 6, in yet another development of what is being called the “Greek Watergate”, the newspaper Documento published an article alleging that numerous journalists, media owners and figures connected to the Greek media industry were among persons targeted with Predator.

Turkish Social Media Platform to Challenge Govt Blockage in Court

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Eksi Sozluk, one of Turkey’s most popular social media networks, on Thursday said it will challenge in court a government agency’s decision to block access to its website without giving any reason.

“No content was given as a basis for the decision taken by the Presidency’s Directorate for Security Affairs,” Eksi Sozluk said on Thursday and added: “We will apply all legal processes against the decision.”

Eksi Sozluk was blocked on Wednesday by decision of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, BTK. Since then, the platform has been trying to get information about the reason.

Although no content was cited for the decision, Eksi Sozluk was told by officials at the Turkish Presidency that the decision was made because, “especially after the earthquake, false information was given about the military and state institutions, the state was shown as desperate and it was determined that posts were aiming to create an atmosphere of chaos among the society.”

Eksi Sozluk added that officials had accused the social media platform of not reacting to “wrong and slanderous content”.

The platform has been a target of pro-government media outlets due to its posts on the earthquakes that were critical about the slow and ineffective response of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s gpvernment.

The February 6 disaster has devastated Turkey’s south and southeastern provinces, killing more than 43,000 people and leaving millions without homes.

Critics say that President Erdogan’s government is using allegedly “slanderous” comments on the handling of the earthquake disaster to silence all criticism of its disaster management.

The government previously blocked most access to Twitter and TikTok and slowed down the internet, complaining about “misinformation”, as public anger mounted about the government’s response to the crisis.

Access to social media networks and the internet was fully restored a day later, following harsh criticism of the move. Critics accused the government of cutting off a key source of communication for relatives of victims, survivors and aid campaigners.

Eksi Sozluk is a collaborative hypertext dictionary working similarly to Reddit and it is one of the most popular Turkish social media platforms and most visited websites since 1999.

Cyber-Attack Hits Greece’s ‘Documento’ After Report on Fraudster’s Wife

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Greek media group Documento’s two websites, Documentonews.gr and Koutipandoras.gr, were subjected to distributed denial-of-service DDoS cyber-attacks on Monday as a result of which the servers went down, and users experienced connectivity problems. 

The hackers buffeted the websites one day after the publication of a new report on Yasam Ayavefe’s wife and her connections to the Greek underworld. 

Earlier, Balkan Insight and Greek media outlets Solomon and Inside Story reported on how Ayavefe was awarded honorary Greek citizenship in 2022 despite the fact that in 2017 he was convicted of defrauding online gamblers in his home country, and in 2019 was arrested in Greece while trying to cross the border into Bulgaria on a false Greek passport. 

Last Sunday, journalist Marios Aravantinos revealed that a Greek criminal organization issued Ayavefe’s wife a fake ID. 

The organisation made fake identity cards and passports, mainly for citizens from Albania or from countries of the former Soviet Union who were involved in some illegal activity. The case was reported to the authorities in December 2021 but Ayavefe was still granted honorary citizenship.

“Documento is the fourth media outlet to come under attack after publishing news about this Turkish man. There is a pattern; whether the perpetrator is the same person remains to be proven. We express our concern,” Aravantinos told BIRN. 

BIRN’s Greek partner media outlet Solomon’s and Inside Story’s websites came under a DDoS attack from hackers last September. “The attack started on Saturday at 7.30 am. That’s when the alarms went off, and around eight, we had already started to react. It was a fierce battle; I never experienced a fight like that,” an IT security expert said about the BIRN attack.  “At one point on Saturday, we had 35 million different IP connections from all over the world. The site was brought down by the number of connections,” he said.

Ukraine War Increases Media Freedom Violations in Europe: Report

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

There was an increase in media freedom violations last year including ten deaths of journalists – nine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and one in Turkey, said the 2022 Monitoring Report published on Tuesday by Media Freedom Rapid Response, a project that monitors such violations in EU states and candidate countries.

“What we have observed in the past year was definitely a dark shadow cast over media freedom through the fog of war in Ukraine, resulting from full-scale Russian invasion, that also led to a steep increase in the number of violations reported on our Mapping Media Freedom database, including the unfortunate loss of nine lives in the country,” Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Rapid Response coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, told BIRN.

Ozturan said that across Europe there were widespread online attacks as well as legal harassment of journalists, while reporters also faced problems when covering environmental issues.

The report said that Media Freedom Rapid Response registered 813 ‘alerts’ last years – incidents that affects at least 1,339 journalists, media workers or outlets.

“Almost half of these alerts originating in the [EU] candidate countries which shows that there is room for improvement in this field. It is crucial to underline the fact that an independent, pluralistic media atmosphere is the basis of our rights,” Ozturan said.

Turkey was the worst EU candidate country for media rights violations, according to the report.

“2022 was another devastating year for press freedom in Turkey, as systemic repression of independent media continued. Mapping Media Freedom, MapMF recorded a total of 167 press freedom violations in Turkey, involving 362 persons or media entities,” the report said.

“Turkey continues to be one of the biggest jailers of journalists in the world. At the time of publishing, 41 journalists were imprisoned,” it added.

In Serbia, “the toxic environment” in which journalists have to work remains a concern, according to the report.

“Constantly fuelled by politicians and other media outlets, the labelling of journalists as ‘traitors’ or ‘enemies of the state’ encourages and legitimises additional intimidation from the public,” the report said.

Media Freedom Rapid Response recorded 41 alerts for Serbia involving 60 journalists or media outlets.

In Albania, “physical violence and verbal attacks on journalists were the gravest threats to press freedom in Albania in 2022”, the report said adding that 17 alerts involving 30 victims were recorded.

“Especially worrying was the number of incidents of police violence towards journalists, which was linked to seven out of the 17 violations (41 per cent) recorded on MapMF,” the report said.

It also highlighted what is said was Prime Minister Edi Rama’s worrying rhetoric about journalists.

Concerns were expressed about the situation in some EU countries in central and south-east Europe.

The report said that in Hungary, the ruling Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has overseen a systematic erosion of media pluralism over the past decade and used pandemic restrictions to hinder independent journalism.

“Media freedom and pluralism in Hungary remained highly challenging in 2022. While MapMF recorded a total of 11 press freedom violations involving 13 targets, these alone do not capture the wider and systemic challenges facing independent media. Over half (54.5 per cent) of the documented cases were legal incidents (six alerts),” the report said.

It recorded 21 alerts involving 28 victims in Poland.

“Legal threats to journalists remained a grave concern in Poland in 2022, accounting for nearly half (42.9 per cent) of the press freedom violations on MapMF registered in the country. Journalists were threatened with defamation lawsuits, and in three cases the lawsuits led to convictions,” the report said.

The report described the media environment in Greece in 2022 as worrying too.

“Press freedom in Greece continued its marked deterioration in 2022 amid a sprawling spyware scandal as well as several serious criminal charges and violent attacks on journalists. MapMF recorded a total of 42 violations involving 63 persons or entities related to media. The safety of journalists remained a serious concern after multiple physical attacks,” it said.

Croatian Journalists Demand Investigation Into Colleague’s Death

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Six months after the death of investigative journalist Vladimir Matijanic, a protest rally held under the slogan “I am sorry to bother you, I can’t breathe”, on Sunday in Zagreb, demanded an investigation into his death.

Matijanic died from COVID on August 5 2022. The 50-year-old, who lived in Split and worked for the Index.hr news website, caught COVID and he and his partner repeatedly phoned his local hospital in Split – but his case was deemed not serious enough to be hospitalized and he died at home due to respiratory problems. He had not been vaccinated owing to underlying health conditions. His partner has insisted his life chances would have been improved if he had been admitted to hospital.

The Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, is advocating for an independent investigation into the circumstances of Matijanic’s death and the resignation of Health Minister Vili Beros.

HND Chairman Hrvoje Zovko and Andrea Topic, Matijanic’s partner, presented the government with a petition signed by nearly 5,000 people demanding the independent investigation.

The protest began with a recording of Matijanic’s call to the Split emergency room, in which he asked for help and said: “I am sorry to bother you, I can’t breathe.”

“We will never give up on this issue. It is this arrogant system …. The minister can say that what we are saying is malicious, but as long as he lives, he will not escape responsibility,” Zovko said.

He added that the protest was not against health workers but against the system.

Many people came to the demonstration on buses from Split, Šibenik, Vinkovci, Vukovar, Daruvar, Virovitica, Osijek, Slavonski Brod, Pula, Rijeka and among those gathered were many journalists, politicians, writers and actors.

Support was also provided by partner organizations, the Independent Union of Journalists of Serbia, NUNS, and the New Optimism organization from Belgrade.

Andrea Topic reiterated that this was a protest for better health care. She read several Facebook messages from Matijanic about Croatia’s struggling health care system, including a message from him dated 4. February 2014, in which he wrote: “I am lying in a hospital that was built many years ago, in a bed that is long past its prime, with bedding that no one has at home anymore, and I am listening to news about the need to reduce skyrocketing health care costs.”

Health Minister Beros accused the protesters of politicising a personal tragedy. “Although the expert opinions on the death of journalist Vladimir Matijanić in Split last August were transparently presented and publicly announced by all relevant professional and state bodies, the Croatian Journalists’ Association and others are once again using the death of their colleague for political goals,” he said.

Greek Arrest Warrant Against Journalist Whistleblower Condemned

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The International Press Institute IPI, the Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers, ESIEA, and the journalist himself have condemned the Greek Supreme Court’s arrest warrant against the TV journalist and publisher Petros Kousoulos.

The Supreme Court’s Prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against Kousoulos for publishing confidential documents on the National Intelligence Service NIS’s surveillance of his newspaper MPAM.

MPAM reported that the NIS wiretapped the telephone conversations of two former officials during the first half of the left-wing SYRIZA-ANEL’s government in 2016.

The wiretapping was about the transfer to a company of Qatari interests of an entire area in the mountains of Zakynthos; a scandal that was widely known at the time, but which Greek media did not cover.

Kousoulos himzelf said it was “unthinkable that in 2022, in a well-organized country like Greece, a journalist would be prosecuted for simply doing his job. I was surprised at the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office, which instead of shedding light on the case and finding the real culprits, issued a warrant for my arrest. All this is a violation of the freedom of the press.”

“We condemn the order of the arrest of Petros Kousoulos,” said a press release by ESIEA, announcing that it will seek a meeting with the Prosecutor to discuss all matters concerning journalists.

Greece is embroiled in a wiretapping scandal, nicknamed “predator gate”. The Supreme Court has not investigated who used and sold the illegal spyware “predator”. Instead, it issued a warrant against a journalist who revealed the state surveillance, which worries Greek journalists.

“I find it unthinkable that in 2022, in a well-organized country like Greece, a journalist would be prosecuted for simply doing his job. I was surprised at the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office, which instead of shedding light on the case and finding the real culprits, issued a warrant for my arrest. All this is a violation of the freedom of the press,” Kousoulos told BIRN on Friday.

“At a time when the political and social life of the country is shaken by the revelations about the scandal of government surveillance, the Prosecutor’s Office spends its time hunting journalists, instead of standing firm in its institutional role and investigating who orchestrated the wiretapping scandal,” Vangelis Triantis, a legal editor at the Greek media outlet Documento, told BIRN.

“The attempted criminalization of journalism aims at intimidating those journalists who in future make similar revelations about the wiretapping scandal. The journalist’s job is to publicize and inform public opinion,” added Triantis.

IPI Europe Advocacy Officer Jamie Wiseman told BIRN: “The initiation of an arrest warrant for a newspaper publisher over a journalistic report in an EU member state is an extremely serious issue, one which deserves scrutiny and raises immediate concerns for press freedom, especially at a time when Greece is already in the spotlight internationally.”

“While the publication of information from confidential documents about state surveillance is clearly a sensitive matter, IPI urges judicial authorities in Greece to proceed with utmost caution and with full respect for the values of public interest journalism and the freedom of the press,” he added.

Turkish Journalists Demand New State Advertising Law After Court Ruling

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Turkish journalists have urged parliament to immediately prepare a new law after the Constitutional Court annulled the current law on the distribution of public advertising revenues and ruled that the state agency violated the freedom of the press.

“The Constitutional Court ruled that the sentences given by the Press Advertising Agency to newspapers violated the freedom of the press. We call on the Advertising Agency to act on this ruling and for parliament to change the law that leads to arbitrariness,” the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, said on Friday.

Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that the fines imposed on the press by the Press Advertising Agency, BIK, violated press freedom. “The BIK has turned into penalizing tool that can have a deterrent effect on some members of the press,” the court said.

According to the court, the BIK cut the media’s public ad revenues for 39 days in 2018, for 143 days in 2019 and 572 days in 2020, calling it “a systematic problem”.

The Constitutional Court also cancelled the related law on the BIK, saying: “The limits of the authority of the BIK were widened in an unpredictable way”.

Following the ruling, parliament must create a new law. Meanwhile, the BIK announced that it will not impose any new fines until the new law is adopted by parliament.

International media watchdogs and critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian rule say that the indefinite bans and fines imposed by the BIK represent another tool to suppress dissent.

State ad revenues are vital for the survival of many small and independent media in Turkey and the BIK is entitled to distribute these revenues and to cut public advertising for any outlet that violates press ethics.

Turkey ranked in 149th place out of 180 countries in 2022 in the latest press freedom index of watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF, which classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

BIRN Journalists Threatened by Turkish Far-Right ‘Wolves’

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Nermina Kuloglija and Hamdi Fırat Buyuk have received threats via phone calls, text messages and on social media from the Turkish far-right Grey Wolves organization’s Bosnian branch.

The threats were sent from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from Turkey, on June 28, and since then, after BIRN published an investigation into the Grey Wolves organisation’s branch and its activities in Bosnia.

Kuloglija and Buyuk continued to receive messages on their phones with intimidating content after the publication of the article.

The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom on its Mapping Media Platform reported on the incidents of harassment, psychological abuse, intimidation and threats against the two BIRN journalists.

“Threats against journalists are unacceptable. In this case it has an international element to it which must be handled not only in the country where the journalists are based,” said Gürkan Özturan, Coordinator of Media Freedom Rapid Response at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, a nonprofit that promotes and defends media freedom.

The Grey Wolves is an international Turkish ultra-nationalist and pan-Turkic organization that rose to prominence in the late-1970s. In 2021, the European Parliament called on the EU to add the Grey Wolves to its list of terrorist organisations. The Grey Wolves in Turkey have been involved in multiple acts of harassment for decades, Özturan told BIRN.

“These threats [ against BIRN journalists] cannot be overlooked and authorities in both Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as other regional and international organizations must be involved in investigations,” he concluded.

Threats to journalists are growing, the UN rights chief, Michelle Bachele, warned in an event marking World Press Freedom Day 2022. Journalism remains a dangerous and even deadly profession.

Worldwide, threats against journalists, online and off-line, imprisonments continue are rising, while online violence and harassment spur self-censorship and, in some cases, physical attacks, said UNESCO’s 2021/2022 online report, “World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development”.

Kosovo MP’s Call for Media Controls Condemned by Unions

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Media unions in Kosovo have criticised ruling Vetevendosje party MP Fitore Pacolli after, on Thursday, she urged the government to take measures to identify investments in the media, which, according to her, are being used for business and public blackmail.

“Recent years have seen large private investments in the media through which the possibility of interference and influence was created in some major and online media, that are being used for business purposes and political blackmail,” she claimed. 

“The Assembly and the government must … take measures and understand what is happening with the operations of the media, their transparency and their ownership,” Pacolli told the Assembly.

After making the statement, the Association of Journalists of Kosovo and the Kosovo Press Council expressed serious concern.

“The open call of MP Pacolli for the direct intervention of the government to control the media is unacceptable for the AGK and the KMShK, and represents a danger to freedom of the media in the country,” their statement said.

They emphasized that any attempt by the government to exercise control over the media would be an unacceptable attempt to interfere in their work, and a serious threat by the government to the media.

Another media organization, Safe Journalists, also condemned the statement of MP Pacolli, calling talk of government control of the media a threat to freedom of expression and democracy.

“MP Pacolli’s open call for direct intervention by the government to control the media is unacceptable as it is also … a danger to freedom of speech and democracy,” it said.

After numerous similar reactions from organizations and civil society, MP Pacolli defended her statement by distributing part of the recent resolution of the European Parliament approved on July 6, 2022, which states that the media environment in Kosovo has been “distorted” in recent years.

“The media environment has been distorted in recent years, with large-scale investments leading to increased private sector influence over mainstream media and online media that are often used for commercial and political blackmail; [the resolution] reiterates the need to guarantee the transparency of the media, including media ownership,” the paragraph that Pacolli shared on Facebook said.

The code of ethics for the print media in Kosovo is a self-regulatory instrument, which the print media, including portals, must respect.

Supervision of the code for possible violations is carried out by a self-regulatory body made up of editors-in-chief and editors of the member media of this body.

The print media commission consists of the media themselves. Televisions and radio stations are regulated by the law on the independent media. The government is expected to declare its view of the statements of the Vetëvendosje MP Pacolli on July 15 at a session of the Assembly.

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