News that the Croatian branch of N1 TV could go off air within days has angered viewers, media unions and democracy watchdogs – especially as screens will go blank at a politically sensitive time, in the run-up to local elections.
“12 days until shutdown on A1,” TV screens of the Croatian branch of the television station, which is CNN’s news channel affiliate in the region, read on Wednesday.
N1 started counting the days when viewers using the services of the A1 cable television provider in Croatia can watch N1 and Sport Klub – produced by United Media company – after the two companies failed to reach an agreement on extending cooperation.
United Group is the biggest alternative telecommunications provider in the region, mainly operating in telecommunications platforms and the media.
Some angry users of the A1 TV platform have announced that they are cancelling their contracts. “Let’s say it’s a good time to cancel the contract and look for another operator. So long A1,” one Twitter user posted on Tuesday.
The Croatian Journalists Association, the Croatian Journalists Union and the democracy watchdog GONG have all voiced deep disappointment, raising concerns that taking N1 TV off air is especially damaging in the run-up to the May local elections.
GONG said that N1 “offers real-time reporting covering all the important events, and their cameras are always where something important is happening”.
It added that N1 “has de facto taken over the role of a public service in terms of news programming”, and that since the local election campaign has already begun, shutting it down now “represents a form of pressure and silencing of a media that ask questions, analyses, and works in the public interest”.
A1, the Croatian mobile network operator, which is part of the Telekom Austria Group, claims United Media demanded unacceptable conditions to continue carrying its channels
“By accepting such conditions, the provision of TV services to our customers would no longer be possible under equally affordable conditions,” A1 stated.
It added that “channels with the most-watched news contents”, such as Croatia’s public television, HRT, and other private televisions, will continue to air on its platform.
But United Media claims it offered A1 the right to continue distributing its channels under the same conditions as before.
Croatia’s Culture and Media Ministry on Tuesday dismissed claims that politics had influenced A1’s decision ahead of the local elections, calling the suggestion “ill-intentioned”.
The ministry insisted the government “knows nothing” about the business relationship between two privately-owned companies.
However, in response to the ministry, Tihomir Ladisic, N1 TV’s news and program director, said the government was responsible for the overall situation “because it has not changed the Law on Electronic Media for years, which would have created the free-market conditions that exist in all countries of the European Union”.
N1 recalled that Croatia is the only EU country in which telecom operators, instead of the free market, set conditions and prices, “ultimately creating media conditions in which they can eliminate and shut down free and independent channels”.
Launched in October 2014, N1 airs from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. It has become known for its professional journalism and provocative questions. N1 television and its journalists also work in a hostile environment in Serbia.
The International Press Institute said on Tuesday that it has joined four other media watchdog organisations in writing to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to express concerns over a decline in press freedom in Slovenia since the government of Janez Jansa came to power.
“We believe the repeated denigration of journalists, combined with the ruling party’s attempts to exert greater control over the country’s public service media, are creating an increasing hostile climate for critical reporting which serves its fundamental role of holding the government to account,” the five organisations said in the letter.
They claimed that as prime minister, Jansa has increasingly employed “Trumpian style tactics” of attacking journalists on Twitter and dismissing critical reporting as “fake news”, but warned that these attacks “go well beyond mere rhetoric”.
The letter was signed by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the European Federation of Journalists, OBC Transeuropa and Reporters Without Borders as well as the International Press Institute.
The Slovenian Government Communication Office, UKOM, faced strong criticism in February after it announced that it will suspend payment for the services provided by the Slovenian Press Agency, STA in January – the second time it has suspended the state-funded STA’s payments in recent months.
In the coming months, the media watchdog organisations’ letter said, the European Commission must respond publicly to any future attacks on the media by Jansa.
“It is vital for press freedom and democracy in the EU that Slovenia does not follow further down the illiberal path forged by Hungary and Poland,” they stated.
The problems facing media freedom in Slovenia, together with the situation for the press in Poland and Hungary, was discussed at the European Parliament’s plenary session last week.
Jansa’s policies could attract greater international attention in the second half of this year, when Slovenia will hold the presidency of Council of the European Union.
Jansa denies restricting media freedoms, and wrote a letter to von der Leyen in late February to insist that the allegations are “absurd”.
The Hungarian Media Council’s decision last September not to renew the broadcast license of Klubradio, the country’s last remaining opposition radio station, surprised no one. The council did not bother to offer corroboration for its claims that Klubradio repeatedly violated media laws, nor did anyone expect it to. The episode is merely the latest instalment in the Hungarian government’s long-running campaign against independent media.
The onslaught began immediately after the 2010 general election, when Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party returned to power. The government immediately adopted a raft of laws imposing new restrictions on media outlets, and established the loyalist-staffed Media Council to enforce them. Within a year or so, all independent journalists who had worked in public media had been ousted, and the public broadcaster became a government mouthpiece.
Since then, Fidesz has steadily tightened its grip on Hungarian media. Through a clutch of supportive oligarchs, the party has seized control of major television and radio stations, news portals, and print media publishers. And in late 2018, Orban-aligned oligarchs established the Central European Press and Media Foundation, which now serves as a holding company for some 500 media entities.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (L) and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (R) attend a handover ceremony the child armour of Sigismund II Augustus on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Visegrad Cooperation in Krakow, southern Poland, 17 February 2021. EPA-EFE/Art Service 2
An inspiration to aspiring autocrats
The effect of such centralization of media ownership and control – not seen since the pre-1989 communist era – has been profound. Last summer, the editor-in-chief of Index, Hungary’s leading news portal, was fired on obviously political grounds, prompting a mass exodus of journalists who resigned in protest.
What might once have been dismissed as an isolated experiment by an increasingly autocratic regime has evolved into a comprehensive program of media capture, a term used to describe extreme levels of control by government authorities working in cahoots with powerful business interests. Orban’s approach to the media has become a source of inspiration for oligarchs and autocratic governments around the world. Particularly in Europe, the Hungarian model is being replicated at a frenzied pace.
For example, Serbia’s state-owned Telekom Srbija has been using taxpayer money to acquire independent media companies and television channels, including PRVA TV and O2, and transform them into pro-government outlets. And in Poland, the right-wing ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), openly calls for the “repolonization” of the country’s media. To that end, PKN Orlen, a state-run oil company, recently acquired Polska Press, a German-owned publisher of 20 regional dailies and nearly 120 weeklies.
Moreover, Hungarian oligarchs have themselves been expanding into several Western Balkan countries, with banker Jozsef Vida’s TV2 Group taking over the popular Slovenian channel Planet TV. And that acquisition followed a series of investments by Hungarian oligarchs in right-wing media companies in Slovenia and Macedonia. Orban has long supported Slovenia’s right-wing extremist prime minister, Janez Jansa, and in 2018 he offered political asylum to former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who had fled his country to avoid a two-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption.
Finally, in a separate development last October, Czech businessman Petr Kellner’s financial group, PPF, bought Central European Media Enterprises, a broadcast network with operations in five Central and Eastern European countries. Although Kellner has pledged to respect CME’s editorial independence, critics question his commitment in light of what has happened to other oligarch-acquired media in the Czech market. For example, outlets previously bought by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s businesses have kept their editorial coverage attuned to their owner’s interests, despite promises that their independence would be respected.
Media capture is not limited to Europe. Through a combination of forced acquisitions and regulatory measures, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has brought most of his country’s prominent media outlets under the control of loyal oligarchs. In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi launched his second term in 2018 by restructuring the media to ensure that it serves his regime. And over the past ten years, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has co-opted most media outlets through state bodies and family members, relying on a strategy orchestrated by his wife, Murillo.
Following the call of the opposition Momentum party, demonstrators march against the dismissal of the editor-in-chief of the Hungarian news website Index.hu, in the streets of Budapest, Hungary, 24 July 2020. EPA-EFE/ZSOLT SZIGETVARY
Strangling independent journalism
Whether it takes the form of Sisification, Orbanization or repolonization, media capture is strangling journalism in the affected countries and making it increasingly difficult for citizens to access objective information. In those cases where independent journalism has not been suppressed entirely, it has been pushed to the margins. Though there are still a few media outlets operating free of government influence in Hungary, they are too small to counter the regime’s massive propaganda machine.
Moreover, when media capture reaches the point that it has in Hungary, remaining independent outlets must tread carefully. That has certainly been the case for RTL Klub, a popular Hungarian television broadcaster owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which suffered a loss of revenue as a result of legal provisions adopted by the Hungarian government in 2014.
Though tackling media capture is an uphill battle, there are at least some partial solutions in sight. One is to reform how public media are funded; however, this is perhaps the most difficult approach, because it targets the central mechanism by which autocrats themselves tend to control the media. Another option is to increase reliance on funding from other donors, be they private foundations, entrepreneurs, or philanthropies – many of which already support independent media. Finally, with their disproportionate influence over the current media ecosystem, today’s tech giants could be pressured to elevate, protect, or otherwise privilege independent journalism on their platforms.
Without a firm response, the epidemic of media capture will continue to spread. As long as it does, no country will be safe from the threat.
Marius Dragomir is Director of the Center for Media, Data, and Society at Central European University, and managed the research and policy portfolio of the Program on Independent Journalism in London.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN. Copyright Project Syndicate. Not for republication.
The Croatian public broadcaster, HRT, confirmed on Tuesday that it had again sacked Hrvoje Zovko, a veteran reporter and president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, HND, for violent behaviour in the workplace. Zovko did not receive an official notice terminating his employment.
“At this stage, we do not know what is written [in the termination notice]. He only received information about the decision from a journalist who called him and said he had been fired and asked for a statement,” his lawyer, Vanja Juric, told BIRN.
It was “quite clear that this is a continuation of [HRT’s] abuse against him that has been going on since 2018,” Juric continued.
HRT told HINA press agency that it had initiated dismissal procedures following “an anonymous report stating the inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour of Hrvoje Zovko towards one worker, a [woman] journalist, at work”.
Zovko on Tuesday denied all wrongdoing: “History repeats itself, not only through the fact that I continue to be abused by the same false accusations as three years ago but also in the fact that, like last time, the whole public was informed of my dismissal before I was.”
HRT sacked Zovko as a journalist and editor in September 2018, citing a “series of insults, misconduct, extremely inappropriate and unprofessional statements”.
It was referring to a quarrel between him and Katarina Perisa Cakarun, editor of HRT’s Information Media Service, which erupted after Zovko announced he would resign as executive editor of the HRT4 channel.
HND said then that it was convinced that the procedure and HRT’s decision would not have happened had Zovko not been the HND President.
Zovko had annoyed his bosses by speaking out about the state of media freedom in Croatia and alleging censorship at HRT. The broadcaster later sued Zovko for damages, seeking 33,300 euros in compensation.
HRT told BIRN on that occasion that it had to seek legal redress because Zovko and others “untruthfully claimed that there is censorship within HRT, though they know that none exists”.
After Zovko initiated a procedure against HRT following his 2018 dismissal, the Zagreb Municipal Labour Court ruled in 2019 that Zovko had been fired unlawfully. In August last year, the Rijeka County Court has upheld the 2019 ruling. In November last year, a court threw out a lawsuit ordering HRT to compensate Zovko for litigation costs of 2,580 euros.
Zovko returned to television after the court ruling, but now HRT has initiated a new procedure against him with similar accusations.
The Ministry of Culture and Media, commenting on his dismissal, said it condemned all forms of violence and abuse and advocated clearer procedures and equal treatment in all cases of suspected violence while adding that everyone must have the right to present a defence.
Zovko insists the accusations are untrue and that “from the behaviour of HRT, it is clear that it is not about the violations of my employment obligations, but about their desire for revenge”.
In January, the weekly Nacional published a story about the alleged sexual harassment of a journalist by the HRT Business Director – but HRT said it had checked the claims and “established that the allegations were unfounded”.
Both the HND and the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, SNH, have said such investigations should be more serious. The SNH president and an HRT reporter, Maja Sever, said they had asked HRT to establish an anonymous reporting system that protects the victim – but the call was rejected.
The Stockholm-based international human rights organisation, Civil Rights Defenders, has condemned what it called “the shameless campaign of the Serbian pro-government tabloid media” against a Serbian investigative media portal, Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, KRIK.
The rights organisation – and independent Serbian media unions – reacted after Pink TV and two pro-government tabloids, Kurir and Alo, published closely coordinated stories linking KRIK to a notorious underworld gangster, Veljko Belivuk.
Belivuk is a leader of a criminal and hooligan group once called the “Janjicari” (“Janissaries”) many of whose members were recently arrested on suspicion of murder, extortion, kidnapping and drug dealing.
Allegations about KRIK’s connections with members of the gang were first published by the pro-government TV station Pink on Tuesday evening.
The next day, Kurir published photos of KRIK editor Stevan Dojcinovic alongside those of Belivuk on its front page with the headline, “Secret deal between KRIK and Belivuk”. Alo then published the same story with a front-page headline reading, “KRIK – Belivuk’s private media!”
In reality, for some years KRIK and some other independent investigative media were the only ones in Serbia to publish stories on the gang and its ties with the Serbian government and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
The gang’s connections to state officials, including a former high-ranking police official and the current general secretary of the Progressive-led government, are well-documented.
Some members of the group formed part of the security detail at President Aleksandar Vucic’s inauguration in 2017, where they were caught on camera manhandling journalists.
However, after the arrest of Belivuk’s group in February this year, pro-government tabloids started publishing hostile stories about the Janjicari along with material leaked from the police investigation.
Zeljko Bodrozic, president of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, NUNS, said on Wednesday that the pro-government media had “initiated a very dangerous action of connecting independent and professional journalists with the criminal group of Veljko Belivuk in order to remove responsibility from state officials for the emergence, strengthening and atrocities of this and other criminal groups.”
“The reports of Pink TV and regime tabloids about connections between KRIK and Belivuk are meaningless constructions, and no one who follows the public scene and the work of the KRIK editorial office can believe these untruths.
“But the big problem is that only a large number of citizens have access to the media that spread and spread these heinous lies, which is why the safety of our brave colleagues who have been writing about corruption and crime for years is now dangerously endangered,” Bodrozic added.
KRIK is a non-profit organisation founded by a team of journalists who for years have been engaged in exposing crime and corruption and have received many awards for their work. It is part of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, an international non-profit organisation that is a consortium of investigative centers and independent media in 20 countries around the world.
After new legislation on copyright and related rights issues passed first its reading in the Croatian parliament, journalists’ associations are warning that it will not adequately protect the rights of journalists and that it gives greater rights to publishers.
Valentina Wiesner, president of the Society for the Protection of Journalists’ Copyright, DZNAP, said that the problematic part of the law concerns the relationship between authors of copyrighted work and employers.
She explained that under the proposed new law, if copyrighted work is created while the author is employed by a company, copyright will be transferred in full to the company, and will remain with the company after the author ceases working for it.
“This is really not a practice that exists anywhere in European law,” Wiesner told BIRN.
Last week, the Croatian Journalists’ Union, the Croatian Journalists’ Association and DZNAP sent an open letter to the government, parliament and Culture and Media Ministry with their own proposals for amending copyright legislation.
The law currently in force says that five years after the date of completion of work created while the author was working for a company, the copyright belongs to the author.
Under the proposed new law, as it has been interpreted by journalists’ organisations, the employer retains the copyright forever.
The journalists’ organisations want the employer only to have the option to assign the right to use an author’s work while an employment contract in force. After the termination of the contract, the employer and the author should make a new contract which will determine the amount of compensation for each future use of copyrighted works, the journalists’ organisations argue.
Wiesner also said that it is a problem is that copyrighted work done by journalists is not specifically listed as a category in the proposed legislation.
In June 2019, the EU adopted Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive – which says it provides “a high level of protection for rights holders” – giving member states two years to enact new national laws reflecting its provisions. That is why many European countries, including Croatia, have to change their current legislation.
The European Federation of Journalists last month warned its members to closely monitor the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive in order to avoid the “Croatian scenario” and the possible denial of income to journalists through the introduction of new legislation.
Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen Korzinek told parliament in February while presenting the law that it would ensure that journalists and publishers are paid for the content they produced.
Maja Sever, the president of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists told BIRN that there is room for changing the proposed law and that her union is trying to work with the ministry.
“It is clear to us that the conditions in which we all work have changed… but our job is to deal with the protection of the copyrights of individuals,” Sever said.
Given the low rates of pay, long hours and stress, journalism was never the most coveted career in the Balkans. But now a survey of media workers in the region shows that COVID-19 has made their working lives a whole lot worse.
By the nature of the job, most journalists can ill-afford to stay at home. At work, however, they face a constant balancing act between getting the story and protecting their health and the health of their loved ones.
While many aspects of life have slowed to a halt, the news cycle has not, but now journalists face the unenviable task of getting to grips with the complexity of the pandemic and explaining it to their viewers or readers, while weeding out fake news and conspiracy theories.
The line between work hours and personal time has become increasingly blurred, exposing journalists to mental health issues the scale of which experts say has still to be fully understood.
And on top of all that, governments and state bodies across the Balkans have restricted the flow of information to the media, making it increasingly hard for journalists to do their jobs.
“Depression could emerge as a concern later on,” said Gentiana Begolli Pustina, head of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, AJK.
“Right now journalists have other existential problems. They go to work and worry they might lose their job. They have no time to think about depression or stress. We will feel the consequences at a later stage.”
Albanian journalists and cameramen reporting about the COVID-19 pandemic in Tirana, on March 30, 2020. Photo: LSA
Finances, workload, mental health and access to information
Between mid-April and mid-May last year, BIRN surveyed media workers in Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia, asking them how the COVID-19 pandemic had changed their work and lives with a focus on financial problems, workload, mental health issues and cooperation with public officials.
Among the findings were:
– A majority of media workers fear for their living standards, with almost two-thirds ranking financial support as a serious need.
– More than 60 per cent on average said that they had ‘more’ or ‘much more’ work than usual. The rate reached 73 per cent in Bosnia and 70 per cent in Serbia.
– More than 55 per cent said that they are losing income due to the pandemic. The situation was worst in North Macedonia.
– More than 58 per cent said reporting on COVID-19 had affected their mental health.
– Most journalists said had the support of their employers when it comes to paid sick leave and adequate protective equipment.
– Roughly 40 per cent said the rate at which public officials failed to answer their question had risen during the pandemic.
– Officials in Serbia are the most restrictive when it comes to answering media questions, with more than half of respondents saying they rarely get answers. At the other end of the scale, 44.5 per cent of respondents in North Macedonia said they often received answers.
– The pandemic has not changed their communication habits. Journalists in the region still predominantly use phone and email, followed by Viber and WhatsApp. Almost 14 per cent said they use Signal, which is considered more secure.
Members of the media capture the arrival of state officials for the Enthronement ceremony for Patriarch Porfirije in Belgrade, Serbia, 19 February 2021. EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC
Lost earnings, lost jobs
Living standards have long been a concern for journalists in the Balkans, since well before the pandemic.
On average, journalists in Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia earn less than the average wage in those countries, according to a study conducted in 2020 by the Association of Journalists of Serbia, UNS.
In the BIRN survey, 58 per cent of respondents ranked financial support as their chief need during the pandemic. For those in North Macedonia, the figure rose to 70 per cent, and in Bosnia almost 67 per cent.
More than 55 per cent of all respondents said that they are losing income due to the pandemic. By country, the highest rate – almost 82 per cent – was in North Macedonia, followed by Albania with almost 64 per cent. Some 37 per cent in Serbia said they were losing money.
Journalist associations have fought to at least save jobs.
“We managed to agree with the government a financial injection so that it can cover the expenses for the journalists’ pension and medical insurance, which was put into effect,” said Macedonian journalist Darko Duridanski of the Independent Union of Journalists and Media Workers, SSNM.
“The government has also helped the media outlets financially so we believe that this was a big reason why we did not see massive loss of jobs and other negative financial repercussions,” he told BIRN.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
Most at risk are video journalists, who are less in demand given the rise in online communication and virtual press conferences.
In Serbia, there have been job losses, most notably at the local public broadcaster in the northern province of Vojvodina, where more than 100 people were laid off between October 2020 and January 2021, most of them on unsecure contracts hired via agencies. RTV Vojvodina saw its budget cut 1.7 million euros by the state in 2020.
“Those people worked the most in the field and risked their health,” said Darko Sper, the RTV Vojvodina union representative of the Nezavisnost [Independence] trade union. “The director even praised them, but it was not enough,” he told BIRN.
Sper said working conditions for journalists had deteriorated “since they are constantly on the front line. They are going in the field to report, from the COVID-19 facilities, doing live pieces on the street or having guests every day in the studio.”
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
More work for same, or less, money
According to the survey, workloads are up, with an average of more than 60 per cent saying they had more to do since the onset of the pandemic.
In Bosnia, 73 per cent of those surveyed said their workload had increased, followed by 70 per cent in Serbia.
“We worked three times more for the same or less money,” one journalist in Bosnia said in the survey, in which respondents submitted answers anonymously.
But the work is being done with the same resources.
“In addition to business challenges in the midst of the coming economic crisis as a result of the epidemic, the biggest problem in production itself was limited human resources relative to the intensity of production, which was significantly higher, and the amount of knowledge related to public health topics,” a Montenegrin media director said.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
On the positive side, a majority of respondents were satisfied with how their employers handled protective equipment requirements or paid sick leave. A third said they were largely left to fend for themselves.
In total, 70 per cent said their employers provided protective equipment and almost 68 per cent said they were granted paid sick leave when they had to self-isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19.
Illustration: Igor Vujcic
Information even harder to come by
In terms of day-to-day work, the pandemic has limited opportunities for journalists to meet their sources in person and made it increasingly difficult to get information out of public officials.
Across the Balkans, efforts to investigate huge public spending to combat the novel coronavirus, often outside of normal public procurement procedures, have been stymied.
“The opportunity to meet personally with my sources because of the movement restrictions and difficulty in obtaining information from institutions, which do not hold press conferences, were among the biggest problems,” said a journalist from Albania.
Of those surveyed, 51 per cent said it was ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain permission to report during curfews imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus. But in Serbia, 31 per cent said it was “difficult’ or ‘very difficult’, twice the average rate in the region.
Serbian journalists also encountered the most difficulty when it came to obtaining information from authorities. Roughly 53 per cent of those surveyed in Serbia said they rarely received replies from official sources to questions concerning COVID-19.
Of all respondents, some 40 per cent said that the number of questions that went unanswered had risen since the start of the pandemic.
Illustration. Igor Vujcic
In Serbia, the government formally sought to limit access to information via a decree issued on March 31 barring anyone outside the government and the COVID-19 Crisis Staff from providing media with information on the pandemic. The move triggered much criticism and the decree was rescinded.
Sper from RTV Vojvodina accused authorities in Serbia of exploiting the pandemic to limit scrutiny of unrelated issues, citing COVID-19 restrictions. But when it came to the country’s June 2020 election, which the ruling Progressive Party won in a landslide, those restrictions were lifted.
“When they needed elections, corona was not a problem,” Sper told BIRN. It was, however, when journalists and the public wanted to attend, for example, a debate on the ecological impact of Chinese [tire manufacturer] Ling Long in the [Serbian] city of Zrenjanin.
”Stress is nothing new to journalists, but the findings of the BIRN survey suggest mental health issues are piling up.
In total, almost 58 per cent said reporting on COVID-19 had affected their mental health. In Albania, the figure rose to 73 per cent. Journalists in Montenegro appear to be faring better, with 29 per cent saying they faced some mental health issues.
In research published in July by the Independent Union of Journalists and Media Workers, SSNM, in North Macedonia, 62 per cent of respondents said the crisis had badly affected their mental health, while 48 per cent said they needed professional psychological support.
In Kosovo, still finding its feet as an independent state since splitting from Serbia in 2008, journalists have had to grapple with a long-running political crisis on top of COVID-19.
This has left journalists in the young country with little time to think about their mental wellbeing.
“We are waiting for a third government to be formed since the pandemic started a year ago,” said Begolli Pustina of the AJK. “While journalists from all over the world have focussed on reporting only on the pandemic, our Kosovo colleagues have been forced to focus more on the constant political crises,” she told BIRN, adding that the scale of mental health issues facing journalists might only become clear later.
Stress is nothing new to journalists, but the findings of the BIRN survey suggest mental health issues are piling up. Photo: Sergey Zolkin/unsplash.com
Will journalism bounce back?
BIRN also asked the journalists surveyed about how they and their employers have dealt with the scourge of misinformation during the pandemic, as well as how they have communicated with sources and obtained information.
According to the responses, only 34 per cent of newsrooms use a specific tool to fight disinformation or verify information.
In Albania, for example, a study by the Albanian Media Council and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung – ‘Media and information of the citizens in times of Corona’ – found that standards had dropped.
“The monitoring shows that Albanian media have regressed in the professional standards of news reporting,” the report stated. “To a large extent, the news produced in the Albanian media has been with unbalanced sources, unverified and, as a consequence, biased. It relied mainly on the statements of institutional and state actors, and for the most part the statements of these actors were considered news.”
The study noted a lack of investigative journalism during the pandemic.
In terms of security precautions, only 13.7 per cent of respondents in the BIRN survey reported using Signal – which is considered more secure – to communicate with sources. Most journalists rely on phone and email, followed by Viber and WhatsApp.
A large majority of the respondents – 68.7 per cent – said they believed the media landscape in their countries would be changed after the pandemic passes. That figure rose to 86 per cent in Albania, but dropped to 59 per cent in Montenegro.
Mila Radulovic of the Association of Professional Journalists of Montenegro, DPNCG, cautioned that many of the problems, while worse since the onset of the pandemic, had long been issues facing journalists in the Balkans.
“There is a great danger that due to the economic crisis, which is the consequence of the pandemic, a large number of colleagues will lose their jobs,” Radulovic told BIRN.
She lamented the working conditions in “most newsrooms”, but added: “We have been talking about it for years.”
Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council, RTUK, the state agency that monitors, regulates and sanctions radio and television broadcasts, has blocked the launch of a critical TV station for more than a year.
Sozcu, one of Turkey’s most read daily newspapers, bought the local TV station over a year ago and made all the preparations necessary for the start of nationwide broadcasting.
But RTUK has stopped the launch of Sozcu TV in its tracks, by not accepting its application for a change of logo, Sozcu said on Thursday.
“Sozcu TV bought SRT TV channel from Mega Agency and Advertisement Company on February 21, 2020, which was broadcasting nationwide with the central satellite system in Sivas. However, the RTUK has unconstitutionally not put Sozcu TV’s application for a logo change on its agenda,” Sozcu explained.
Sozcu said that it first applied for a logo change on February 27 2020. “Sozcu applied to change the TV channel’s logo from ‘Sivas SRT’ to ‘SZC’ but the RTUK did not answer. After we at Sozcu daily newspaper made this public … RTUK overruled the application and fined Sozcu, saying Sivas SRT’s logo was being misused as ‘SRT Sivas,’” Sozcu added.
Since then, Sozcu says it has applied four more times to RTUK, which has still not given an answer. The RTUK is constitutionally obliged to answer such applications from between eight to 10 days.
Observers say that, in recent years, RTUK has become a tool of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to put pressure on remaining independent media in the country.
A recent report from the Journalists’ Association of Turkey said that between July and September 2020 alone, RTUK issued 90 penalties against independent media outlets, including halts to broadcasting and administrative fines.
On February 10, RTUK again fined KRT TV, Fox TV, Halk TV and Tele 1, all of which are seen as critical of the authorities for different reasons.
While the Turkish government, via RTUK, stops the launch of more unwelcome critical TV stations, existing TV stations have suffered from increased political pressure.
Olay TV, which hired many well-known senior journalists after a Turkish businessman bought the channel last summer, was closed down in December 2020, only two months after its launch.
The owner said the station had been unable to withstand the political pressure, and its editors had failed to find a new owner.
The Human Rights Watchdog Freedom House listed Turkey as not free in 2020. The World Press Freedom Index, of another watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, ranks Turkey in 154th place among 180 countries in terms of press freedom.
State regulation of the media should be limited, with self-regulation strengthened and prioritized, journalists and media experts from the region told the third and final online public debate on online media regulation held by BIRN on Wednesday.
Panelists representing different prominent media in the region as well as legal experts focused on potential solutions for self-regulation and regulation of online media, considering the growing pressures that media in the region face, such as speed, clicks and disinformation.
The panelists agreed that the government should not have mechanisms to interfere in the media content but should provide regulations to ensure a better environment for journalists to work in.
Authorities should also strengthen the rule of law in terms of copyright and censorship of hate speech, pornography, and ethical violations, they said.
Flutura Kusari, legal advisor at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, said Kosovo has a good self-regulatory non-governmental body, the Press Council, which consists of around 30 local media representatives, all holding one another accountable.
However, self-regulation is limited due to the lack of rule of law all over the region, Kusari explained.
Geri Emiri, editor at the Albanian media outlet Amfora, explained that most of the media in Albania have self-regulatory mechanisms whereby anyone can complain of abuses.
“It is not enough if the will to self-regulate, after a complaint by a citizen, does not exist,” Emiri said, explaining the difficulties media in Albania face from the government trying to create legal methods that he said lead to “censorship”.
Emiri was referring to legislation proposed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama as an “anti-defamation package”, which aimed to create an administrative body with powers to order media to take down news reports that “infringe the dignity of individuals”, under the threat of heavy fines. Critics said the law could have a chilling effect on media freedom due to its broad terms.
Goran Mihajlovski, editor-in-chief at the Macedonian media outlet Sakam da kazam, agreed that government bodies would not be right for media regulation “due to changes in government and [because] the body would politically be appointed and would open doors to more political influence and pressure on the media”.
Jelena Vasic, project manager at KRIK, Serbia, said professional media can assist in regulating the media enviroment in the region and in curbing fake news by “debunking” and fact-checking news that is already published.
Vasic said he was aware that debunked fake news often does not reach all of the audience that the fake news has already reached, but added that, “even if half of the people who read the fake news are now faced with the facts, a good change has been made”.
Alen Altoka, head of digital media at Oslobodjenje, Bosnia, said one of the main problems behind the increase in fake news in the region is profit-based media organisdations, suggesting that Google should not allow ads for fake news portals as one solution.
BIRN engages in fact checking and debunking fake news, as well as other digital rights violations in the region via its Investigation Resource Desk platform, BIRD, monitoring tool.
In a surprise setback to the authoritarian President, the Turkish Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that the Presidency’s move to take direct control over the Anadolu Agency is against the constitution.
The news agency is constitutionally an autonomous institution with a budget supplied by the state. But after the country introduced an executive presidential system in 2018, concentrating power in the head of state, it was put under the direct control of the Communications Directorate of Turkish Presidency by presidential decree.
“The control of Anadolu Agency by a directorate under the Turkish Presidency does not accord with Anadolu Agency’s autonomy and may harm the objectivity of its publications,” the court said in a statement.
The statement added that such direct control undermined the institutional independence of the agency’s organisation and human resources.
Opposition parties and media experts accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of turning Anadolu Agency into a government mouthpiece.
The Constitutional Court made its decision following the submission of a complaint by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP. Only two judges voted against, while the other 13 members voted to scrap the presidential takeover.
Anadolu Agency was established by Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in 1920, mainly to tell the world about the Turkish War of Independence that followed the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1925, the agency was made a private company with a view to making it a modern and independent media outlet, but with funding secured by the state.
A century on, it is now a global news agency with publications in 13 different languages, including Arabic, English, French and Russian.
The new agency has also become an important instrument in Turkey’s application of “soft power” foreign policy activism in the Balkans. It operates in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Albanian and Macedonian with regional offices in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Skopje, North Macedonia.
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