Category: Transparency

North Macedonia: Facebook Pages Target Users with ‘Identical Content’

Posted on by BIRD

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, DFRLab, which works to counter disinformation online, says its researchers have found dozens of Facebook pages linked to at least 10 Macedonian news outlets, demonstrating “several characteristics pointing to coordinated activity, including the near simultaneous publication of identical content”.

While some of these Facebook “assets” acknowledged their connection to the outlets whose content they were amplifying, others had no known connection.

“The assets also demonstrated signs of inauthenticity, as they were created as various interest pages, but ultimately promoted content from news sites to which they disclosed no connection,” DFRLab said.

It added this was clearly an efficient strategy, as the pages in every network had more followers than the official Facebook pages of the promoted media outlets.

A total of four separate networks or subsets of coordinated Facebook assets were amplifying content published by some of these websites: Republika Online, Kurir, Denesen, News24, Puls 24, Galama Club, among others. 

Only one of these is a tabloid. The others publish mostly political content: one of the outlets is openly pro-opposition. The others offer more balanced reporting on internal affairs. 

DFRLab research found coordination within networks of pages, but not across the four networks. There was also no sign that North Macedonian media outlets themselves managed the inauthentic networks.

The Facebook pages were created between 2009 and 2018 and were mostly managed from North Macedonia. Some were managed from the US.

According to DFRLab’s research, some of the Facebook pages seemed connected to Adinamic Media, which publishes news sites supporting the main opposition VMRO-DPMNE party. 

This media company is believed to have links with the Hungarian pro-government public TV network, Magyar Televizio, MTV.

Researchers said the presence and success of these networks had added to the political polarization in North Macedonia ahead of early parliamentary elections due this year. 

“The use of an inauthentic network on social media may enable political forces to mislead people and spread manipulated content to garner voter support, raising a concern on the integrity of the electoral process in the country,” DFRLab said.

VMRO-DPMNE, Putin and right-Wingers

Different pages amplified the same content at the same time from the same media outlets. Red boxes highlight posts from official Facebook pages of Vistina and Republika showing simultaneous posting by official and amplifier pages. Photo: Courtesy of DFRLab

According to the research, the first network consisted of seven Facebook pages that were amplifying articles published by Republika Online, Kurir, Denesen and Vistina. 

Vistina is a tabloid and doesn’t cover political topics. The remaining three mainly report on political issues and feature pro-VMRO-DPMNE views. All are owned by the same media holding, Adinamic Media, which is connected to Hungary’s MTV, the report said.

According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a former senior executive at MTV, Agnes Adamik, established Adinamic Media in 2017. The company then purchased a majority of shares in three media companies in the country, mostly supporting VMRO-DPMNE.

According to some experts, these acquisitions helped Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, expand his and his country’s influence in the Balkans. They also supported his then ally in Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, who obtained asylum in Hungary after fleeing a prison sentence in his home country in 2018.

The Facebook pages in this network posted almost identical articles and at the same frequency. The total number of followers of the seven pages was more than 690,000, while the official Facebook pages had less than 300,000 followers.

“This may indicate that since these outlets had not been successful in growing audiences for their official Facebook pages, they decided to create coordinated networks to amplify their content,” the researchers say.

The second network comprised 17 Facebook pages publishing content from three news outlets: Markukle, News24 and Signal. These also report political issues, but their content is not openly anti-government. 

Some publish supportive articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin, portraying him as an influential leader who upholds traditional values and helps friends in need. News24 sometimes amplified Russia Today and Sputnik videos.

As for the third network of pages, the DFRLab researchers found that the “amplifier pages … may be connected to Filip Petrovski, a right-wing presidential candidate in the 2019 North Macedonia presidential elections and a former member of VMRO-DPMNE party”.

Petrovski opposed the country’s change of name to North Macedonia and has called for the cancellation of the related Prespa agreement with Greece, signed in 2018. Petrovski also posts News24 articles on his own Facebook account.

Two pages in this network had names related to Petrovski, and their “about” sections contained details from his biography and political views.

The fourth network of Facebook assets amplified content published by two outlets, Net Medical Diet, which reports on health, and Galama. According to the research, the eight amplifier pages were managed from North Macedonia and from the US.

DFRLab also found five Facebook pages amplifying content from outlets owned by EM media, in which Adinamic Media has a majority of shares.

“Although the DFRLab was not able to identify coordination between them, there is a likelihood that EM Media was using these assets for content promotion,” the report said.

Twitter Purges ‘Fake’ Accounts Glorifying Turkish Leader

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Twitter said it had removed 7,340 “fake and compromised” accounts on Friday, which were linked to the youth branch of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP.

“The collection of fake and compromised accounts was being used to amplify political narratives favourable to the AKP, and demonstrated strong support for President Erdogan. We’re disclosing 7,340 accounts to the archive today,” Twitter wrote.

On Friday Twitter disclosed more than 32,000 accounts in all, mostly from China – 23,750 accounts, Turkey and Russia because they were suspected of being “state-linked information operations”.

Twitter said it had worked with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute ASPI and Stanford Internet Observatory SIO and had shared relevant data with them.

“Collaborative research provides us with a way to learn from past operations and mitigate future malign efforts,” SIO wrote on Twitter’s latest decision.

According to media reports, Erdogan ruling party and its youth branch run tens of thousands of essentially fake accounts, promoting the President. These accounts are often nicknamed the “Ak Trolls”.

Twitter also said that the accounts had hacked other accounts that were more critical of President Erdogan. They were also used for commercial activities, such as cryptocurrency-related spam.

Twitter’s policy on manipulation and spam prohibits “coordinated activity that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation and/or scripting”.

Twitter previously deleted thousands of accounts from Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Serbia for similar reasons.

Serbia was by far the top country in terms of the number of removed accounts. Twitter axed almost 9,000 accounts in April that were promoting Serbia’s ruling Progressive Party and its leader, President Aleksandar Vucic, so violating company policy on manipulation and spam.

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

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Falsely accused of ‘spying’ and deleting content


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-vaxxers promoting conspiracy theories


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fact-checkers playing catch-up


Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/HARISH TYAGI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook Takes Axe to Pages Showing ‘Inauthentic Behaviour’

Posted on by BIRD

Facebook’s April 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour Report, published on May 5, said a total of eight networks of accounts, Pages and Groups were removed in the last month for violating the social media giant’s policy against foreign and domestic interference. 

The report said that these influence operations were “coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation”.

The media giant said it was working to stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the context of domestic and non-state campaigns as well as behaviours acting on behalf of a foreign or government actor.

Two of the removed networks, originating from Russia and Iran, were focused on international issues and were trying to interfere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Serbia, the report said.

As for Russia, Facebook removed 46 Pages, 91 Facebook accounts, 2 Groups, and 1 Instagram account “for violating the policy against​ ​foreign interference​ which is​ ​coordinated inauthentic behaviour​ on behalf of a foreign entity”. 

It said this activity originated not only from Russia but from the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. The people behind it posted in Russian, English, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Serbian, Georgian, Indonesian and Farsi, focusing on a wide range of regions around the world.

“The individuals behind this activity relied on a combination of authentic, duplicate and fake accounts – many of which had been previously detected and disabled by our automated systems. 

“They used fake accounts to post their content and manage Groups and Pages posing as independent news entities in the regions they targeted,” the report said, adding that the networks posted ​about geopolitical and local news including topics such as the military conflict in Ukraine, the Syrian civil war, the annexation of Crimea, NATO, US elections, and more recently the coronavirus pandemic​. ​

Facebook’s investigation linked the activity to people in Russia and Donbass as well as to two media organizations in Crimea, NewsFront and SouthFront. 

Following the report, SouthFront dismissed the claims that it offered misleading coverage concerning the coronavirus pandemic and said it does not operate from Crimea, calling it all “blatant lies”.

A total of $3,150 was spent for ads on Facebook and Instagram and was paid for primarily in US dollars, Russian rubles, and Euros, the report added.

Facebook also removed 118 Pages, 389 Facebook accounts, 27 Groups, and 6 Instagram accounts originating from Iran. 

This activity was focused on a wide range of countries globally, including Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, the United States, Britain and Zimbabwe.

These accounts, the report said, “sometimes repurposed Iranian state media content and posted primarily in Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, and English about geopolitical and local news relevant to each region including topics like the civil war in Syria, the Arab Spring protests, the tensions between Libya and Turkey, criticism of Saudi involvement in the Middle East and Africa, Al Qaeda’s actions in Africa, the Occupy movement in the US, criticism of US policies in the Middle East and the 2012 US elections.”

As for the people behind the coordinated activity, the Facebook investigation found links to the state Iranian Broadcasting Corporation. 

The remaining six networks of accounts, Pages and Groups​ that were also taken down were based in the US, Georgia, Myanmar and Mauritania, and were targeting domestic audiences in their home countries. 

In total, Facebook removed 732 accounts, 793 Pages, 200 groups and 162 Instagram accounts. The report said they were also sharing misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of the networks we took down … in April were created before the COVID-19 pandemic began, however, we’ve seen people behind these campaigns opportunistically use coronavirus-related posts among many other topics to build an audience and drive people to their Pages or off-platform sites. 

“The majority of the networks we took down this month were still trying to grow their audience, or had a large portion of engagement on their Pages generated by their own accounts,” the report noted.

North Macedonia Accused of Dodging Media Scrutiny in Crisis

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After drawing flak from journalistic and media associations for employing an unsuitable register of online media to select which outlets should get permits to work during curfews and ask questions at press conferences, the Information Society Ministry says it had rectified any omissions.

This ministry, which is in charge of issuing these online permits, says media outlets are now being checked directly through the country’s central registry of firms, not through a register of online media created for a different purpose by the country’s oldest and biggest media union.

Amid complaints from the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, ZNM, that the ministry had more or less hijacked its register and misused its purpose, the ministry told BIRN that its only intention had been to prevent the spread of “fake news” in the health crisis.

However, some pro-opposition online media outlets still accuse the authorities of discrimination and “silent” censorship, saying they are put in an unequal position compared to others at virtual press conferences.

Use of media register drew flak

The dispute started in late March, when the ministry issued a statement saying that only those outlets listed on the ZNM’s register of professional online media, Promedia, would be eligible to apply for permits to work during the daily curfews.

The same rule applied to outlets wanting to ask questions at government press conferences, which were already being held without the physical presence of journalists, who were only able to ask direct questions through a video conference call, or submit them online to the government press service and wait for them to be read out by the spokesperson and answered by ministers.

The ZNM and the Council of Ethics in Media, SEMM, a self-regulatory journalistic body, accused the government of using the register to select favoured online media.

The ZNM’s executive director, Dragan Sekulovski, told BIRN that the purpose of Promedia had been misused.  The register of some 120 online media outlets “was intended to promote self-regulation and professional standards, help citizens distinguish professional online outlets from propagandists and fake news sites and incentivise businesses to advertise in professional outlets”, Sekulovski explained to BIRN.

“The OSCE, the US embassy and the European Union praised us for our efforts to put some order in the online media sphere. It was not fair of the state to interfere [with it] and use the [health] crisis as an excuse,” he said.

He noted that the register was never intended to be an all-encompassing media source. Media participate in it voluntarily; those who wish to be listed on it first apply and are then their basic professional and ethical standards are checked.

While Promedia lists 120 listed outlets, the state’s central business registry lists more than 400 online media outlets.

The Promedia registry notably does not include many pro-opposition outlets that formerly defended the ex-government of Nikola Gruevski, which fell in mid-2017, and continue to promote the standpoints of his now opposition VMRO DPMNE party.

Most of these are now grouped in the country’s other journalistic union, the Macedonian Association of Journalists, MAN, which was formed during Gruevski’s time in office and has also accused the current Social Democrat-led government of using double standards.

Ministry says it had no ill intent

Journalist, members of North Macedonia’s government and guests in the government press room. Archive photo: EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI

After prolonged silence in the face of this criticism, the State Secretary at the Information Society Ministry, Adem Avziu, told BIRN on Friday that its intention had not been to discriminate against any particular online media but only to “prevent the spread of fake news and panic in this extraordinary situation.

“We all know we have many unregistered portals that are spreading all kinds of false info amid this crisis, so our intent was to prevent this,” Avziu said.

He claimed that any mistakes made earlier had now been fixed. “Control measures have now been significantly boosted. All media now apply and fill in forms on one address, at uslugi.gov.mk, and permits are issued after their data has been checked through the database of the central business registry,” he said.

Opposition outlets still cry foul

The enduring divisions between media in North Macedonia are a legacy of Gruevski’s authoritarian government’s decade-plus in office.

On one side are media that gravitate towards the ZNM, and are trying to restore professional standards and strengthen self-regulation in the media sphere. Some of them are now outlets that defend the Social Democrats-led government.

On the other side are Gruevski’s former megaphones, who received large sums in the form of government advertisements while he was in power and who formed the parallel journalists’ association MAN, which at the time was seeking to overshadow the ZNM. Most of these media have continued to support the VMRO DPMNE party in opposition and attack anyone that the party deems an enemy.

These media were asked to sign the journalistic code of ethics and join the media register created by the ZNM but have not done so.

Kurir is among the most prominent of such online outlets, and managed to survive Gruevski’s downfall in 2017, largely thanks to its recent takeover by Hungarian firms linked to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s PR machinery, and the subsequent inflow of Hungarian advertisement money.

In 2018, the company Adinamic Media, owned by a Hungarian national called Agnes Adamik, acquired ownership of the Kurir and Republika website and a share of the ownership of the Netpress website.

But despite the ministry’s insistence that it has now fixed the problem with the permits, the editor-in-chief of Kurir, Ljupco Cvetanovski, said that his outlet still feels discriminated against.

Cvetanovski told BIRN that the current form of censorship was “maybe not so evident and public as was first intended with the registry [of online media], but we still feel some form of censorship”.

While conceding that his site no longer encountered any problems with getting permits to work during the curfews, he said the way press conferences are being held did not allow them to ask direct questions through video link, like some other media, while questions submitted electronically often never get answered.

“We submit several questions daily [to the government press service] but only one of our questions has ever been read out at press conferences and answered,” Cvetanovski claimed.

He added that in this way the government was elegantly dodging “tough” questions – or at least giving itself more time to prepare suitable answers in advance.

Continue reading “North Macedonia Accused of Dodging Media Scrutiny in Crisis”

Greek Govt Support for Media Comes at Expense of Transparency

Posted on by BIRD

A decision by Greek Prime Minister Kuriakos Mitsotakis’ secretary-general to commit 11 million euros from the national budget to an urgent publicity campaign that will run until the end of May to promote measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 has raised alarm among opposition MPs.

Urgent legislation was already introduced on March 11, obliging TV and radio stations to regularly broadcast short public health messages for free.

Another piece of legislation on March 30 suspended payments for six television companies of the annual fees they pay for nationwide licences to broadcast.

As each of them was due to pay 3.5 million euros in 2020, this year’s loss of income would be up to 21 million euros. The content of the legislation is vague and it remains unclear if, when and how the suspended fees will be paid in the future.

The decisions have raised criticism among opposition MPs that the government is using the COVID-19 measures to improve its relations with the media without transparency.

More concerns were raised when the contract to implement the 11-million-euro publicity campaign was directly awarded to a private company with a three per cent commission on the total amount, which amounts to 330,000 euros. The criteria for how media outlets will be chosen to carry the publicity material and what amounts of money will be distributed to the chosen media outlets have also not been made public.

On top of this, the implementation of the programme by a private company removes the responsibility to upload information on the allocation of funds to the public transparency registry, which would have been necessary if the government had decided to implement the programme without an intermediary.

“There are a number of pertinent questions around this campaign that the government will have to answer,” veteran MP Sofia Sakorafa from the Mera 25 party told BIRN.

“Why is this campaign necessary if media are already obliged to broadcast free messages and they are reporting on COVID-19 from early morning till late at night anyway? How was the implementing partner chosen, using which criteria and out of what other companies? Since we are talking about public funds, which state or independent authority will examine which allocations [are made] and under what criteria they happened? Is there going to be transparency so we all learn which media were funded and with how much?”

An urgent meeting of the Greek parliament’s Transparency Committee discussed the issues on April 10. Answering questions regarding the direct award to a private company as well as the suspension of TV licence payments, government spokesperson Stelios Petsas responded that “if we held a tender we would need at least six months” before starting the campaign, which would be completely inefficient.


Greek Parliament building in Syntagma square and the empty streets of the capital city of Athens, Greece, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREAS TSAKNARIDIS

He also insisted that in the end, the amounts given to media companies under the programme will be made public and that TV licenses fees would be paid in full.

But Syriza MP Nikos Voutsis, who was president of the Greek parliament from Oct 2015 to July 2019, told BIRN that the answers were less than satisfying.

“Due to past experience we know the government can bring in an urgent amendment anytime and exempt TV channels from paying these obligations. The future will prove what the intentions of the government are on this issue. Until then, this suspension is a small first gift,” Voutsis said.

But the lack of scrutiny over the 11-million-euro campaign is an even bigger problem, he argued.

“The big issue is that they are evading the obligation to publish the information on the transparency registry. The spokesperson has not taken any step back, it’s not a practical issue but a political choice, since the previous government had put in place a transparent process to distribute ten million euros of support funding to the press,” he said.

“We believe this is a process that should only take place with bipartisan cooperation and consensus based on the existing media registry [of outlets that can receive state funding],” he added.

The Greek press’s circulation has collapsed since COVID-19 lockdown measures were introduced. To contain the downward trend, owners and employees’ associations asked for newspapers to be circulated through supermarket chains – a move to which the government agreed at the end of March.


Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/ORESTIS PANAGIOTOU

The association of regional newspapers has asked that 30 per cent of the 11-million-euro package is committed to the regional press. It also claimed that urgent advertising bought by regional municipalities around the country “is not following any of the criteria envisaged by the law”.

According to the law, public funding should follow certain criteria based on circulation and readership as well as the income of each media outlet being funded, in order to protect pluralism and objectivity and avoid influence.

Meanwhile, according to experts, TV viewing ratings have increased by 25 per cent since the lockdown, and bymore than 60 per cent among four-to-17-year-olds, but profits are estimated to have plummeted by 30 per cent since mid-February.

Greek journalist Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou, a member of an investigative journalists’ consortium called The Manifold, told BIRN that transparency is the key issue that must be addressed.

“Support for the media is necessary, but distributing money in a habitat like that of the Greek media, which is notorious for its lack of transparency and clientelistic relations, without making clear immediately who gets what and why, is a very serious issue,” Papadimitriou said.

He argued that without transparency, no matter how much support is given, the big issues that shape the media situation in Greece won’t be addressed.

“There is no excuse for a lack of transparency in distributing funds from the government to a media landscape that was already largely abstaining from contesting the government’s actions, even before the coronavirus crisis,” he said.

“It is even more worrying when that happens in a situation in which media, their owners, who are also involved in other sectors of the economy, and the political class have proved to be co-dependent in many ways,” he added.

Montenegro Urged to Delay Law Change Debate in Pandemic

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

On Thursday, the civic organizations and media in Montenegro have called on Prime Minister Dusko Markovic to postpone public consultations about the draft freedom of information law amid the coronavirus outbreak.

More than 50 civic organizations, journalists and media organizations warned that the lockdown had made participatory debate almost impossible.

“We have numerous restrictions on movement and there are no sessions of parliament, so there are no elementary conditions to hold a meaningful public debate on the issue,” their joint letter states.

On March 31, civil society organizations and journalists also called for a postponement, while the chair of the watchdog body Transparency International, Delia Ferreira Rubio, advised that any non-emergency legislative measure that requires public consultation should be postponed until full, active participation can be guaranteed.

Despite that, the Ministry of Public Administration has called for written comments on the law amendments to be submitted via the ministry’s email address by April 13. After that, the ministry announced, a public debate will be organized using a video conference.

“The draft law has numerous proposals that narrow our rights on information from state bodies. It also restricts the work of investigative journalists and the non-governmental sector,” the signatories to the letter said, referring to the proposed law.

The government proposed the draft law in March 2019. It would allow it to declare any information “classified” if its disclosure would affect a government body’s ability to function.

It also removes controls over the ways in which state bodies declare information classified. Civic organizations, media groups and opposition parties have insisted that the amendments are not in line with the Montenegrin constitution, or with international agreements that the country has signed up to.

The country’s culture of official secrecy has attracted European attention. The European Commission’s 2019 report on Montenegro noted that official secrecy was cited in 68 denied requests for information in 2017, well up from 30 the year before.

It described an increasing practice of declaring requested documents classified, in order to restrict access to information, as a matter of concern. The report also stated that court decisions on access to information are not effectively enforced.

Central and Eastern Europe Freedom of Information Rights ‘Postponed’

Posted on by BIRD

Citing the fight against COVID-19, authorities in a number of Central and Eastern European countries have extended the amount of time state bodies have to respond to freedom of information, FOI, requests, part of what media watchdogs say is a worrying crackdown on press freedom since the onset of the pandemic.

Media regulations across the region have been tightened under states of emergency and journalists have been arrested on accusations of spreading misinformation concerning the response of authorities to the spread of the novel coronavirus. 

Some countries have sought to centralise the dissemination of official information and banned certain media from regular briefings. 

FOI requests, a vital tool for journalists, have also fallen victim to the virus response; in Moldova, public officials have been allowed to decide alone whether or not to respond, while in Serbia, officials can refuse to respond to questions that are not related to the pandemic. In some cases, state bodies have been told they can delay responding until after a state of emergency has been lifted.

The measures have come in for criticism from rights organisations and raised suspicion that governments are trying to avoid public scrutiny of their response to the pandemic, which in many countries has been slow, chaotic and hampered by shortages of protective equipment for frontline medical staff.

Governments have an obligation to “ensure that measures to combat disinformation are necessary, proportionate and subject to regular oversight,” Dunja Mijatovic, human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe said on Friday.

Describing access to information as a “collateral victim” of government responses, Mijatovic said: “Despite the fact that timely information is essential for the public to understand the danger and adopt measures at a personal level to protect themselves, the filtering of information and delays in responses to freedom of information requests have been observed in several member states.”

Her statement followed a letter to the CoE from ten rights organisations that promote press freedoms and freedom of speech, among them Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists, urging the 47-member body to take urgent measures against countries they accused of exploiting the crisis to curb essential freedoms.

Deadlines extended in Romania and Moldova


Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT.

In European Union member Romania, President Klaus Iohannis signed a decree on March 16 declaring a 30-day state of emergency, which included a provision doubling the amount of time state institutions have to answer FOI requests.

Media outlets including Dela0.ro have reported that several local branches Health Ministry departments have cited the fight against COVID-19 in refusing to provide information to journalists or deferred questions to the communications office created by the Interior Ministry to centralise information about the crisis.

Likewise in neighbouring Moldova, authorities on Friday tripled the amount of time public bodies have to respond to FOI requests, from 15 days to 45. Media researcher and Independent Press Association, API, journalist Mariana Jacot told BIRN that when she had asked for public information from the Health Ministry she was told that ministry officials have more important things to deal with.

FOI right postponed in Serbia

In Serbia, the government has also extended the deadlines for state institutions to respond to a range of requests, including FOI requests to which institutions now have 30 days to respond once the state of emergency in the country is lifted.

Last week, for example, the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications told BIRN it would respond to an FOI request submitted by BIRN, “within the legal deadlines upon the termination of the state of emergency.”

Serbia’s Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Milan Marinovic, welcomed the government’s measure in a statement on March 25. 

Marinovic, who was nominated to the post last year by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party of President Aleksandar Vucic, said the move addressed a “number of concerns regarding the course and the calculation of deadlines during a state of emergency.”

His predecessor, however, questioned the way in which the measure was adopted.

“The government can adopt that regulation only when the parliament cannot meet due to objective reasons,” Rodoljub Sabic told BIRN. “The notion that parliament sessions cannot be held now is completely unsustainable, it is complete legal nonsense.”

The Serbian parliament was dissolved on March 15 after the government banned all gatherings of more than 50 people. 

Referring to the trade ministry’s response to the BIRN FOI request, Sabic said: “Your right has practically been postponed.”

“Of course they can answer you. The regulation does not ban it, it only extends the deadlines. If they want, they can answer you.”

“Unfortunately, the regulation puts them in a position where they don’t have to answer the request. They can postpone your right until the state of emergency is over,” he said. “It all comes down to that body’s goodwill.”

Public debate in Montenegro amid pandemic


Delia Matilde Ferreira Rubio, chair of the board of directors of Transparency International. Photo: EPA-EFE/ALESSANDRO DELLA VALLE.

In Montenegro, rights groups have deplored a decision by the government to press ahead with public consultation on proposed amendments to the country’s law on access to information despite the restrictions imposed on public life amid the pandemic.

On March 31, civil society organisations and journalists called for a postponement, arguing that the lockdown had made participatory debate impossible.

The following day, the chair of Transparency International, Delia Ferreira Rubio, warned that any non-emergency legislative measure that requires public consultation should be postponed until full, active participation can be guaranteed.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of Public Administration called for written comments on the amendments to be submitted via the ministry’s official e-mail address by April 13.

The non-governmental Institute Alternative, which promotes good governance and democracy in Montenegro, urged the ministry to wait until the pandemic had passed.

“There is no reason to rush and have a bad discussion during the pandemic,” Stevo Muk said in a press release on April 3. “Especially since neither the government nor the parliament is functioning in a regular way.”

This article was changed on April 7 to amend the time Moldovan authorities have to respond to FOI requests.

COVID-19: Dealing with Gaps in the Data

Posted on by BIRD

One of the major problems with the COVID-19 pandemic is the speed at which the contagion spreads. This makes treating infected people much more difficult to manage, but also severely hinders our ability to have an up-to-date, thorough and trustworthy picture of the situation in Europe and the rest of the world.

The information we rely on is approximate and often errs on the side of caution (for example, the number of infected people, or deaths caused by the pandemic). It’s important to be aware of these limitations, and approach the data with caution, even if this data is the best we have, given the present circumstances. Of all official data on the global situation, that produced by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is considered among the most reliable. Nevertheless, new and more accurate studies are emerging every day, providing additional data to help understand the pandemic and its course of development.

How many are really infected?

We don’t know. What we do know is the number of confirmed infections – individuals testing positive for the virus – and highly approximate estimates of total infections.

The test for the virus involves taking a sample of saliva or mucus, which is then analysed for traces of the virus’ genetic code. The number of people being tested varies widely from country to country: depending, above all, on how well-equipped a country is to perform large-scale testing (often it’s not the kits that are lacking, but the personnel and laboratories required to analyse huge quantities of swabs). In certain countries, authorities decide to focus on people already showing symptoms associated with COVID-19, or even just those who are already hospitalised. We know, however, that many who have contracted the virus do not show any symptoms, or only start to show symptoms many days after being infected.

The percentage of infected people accounted for in the data varies widely from country to country. This makes it difficult to compare the development of the pandemic in different times and places. For example, Italy has performed around 3500 tests for every million inhabitants, compared to 6100 in South Korea, and 600 in Spain. According to an estimate attempted by the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases, in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Italy and Spain may have only recorded 5 percent of people actually infected. 

How many have really died?

This is also unknown, even if the number of deaths can be estimated with more precision than cases of infection.

What we do know is the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 (unfortunately, the criteria for attribution are not yet internationally standardised). However, we cannot be sure that all deaths caused by the coronavirus have been recorded: in the most heavily hit areas of Italy, indications suggest that tests are not performed on all victims (many of those who die at home or in retirement homes, for example). Moreover, authoritarian regimes such as China and Iran may have an interest in publishing incomplete data in order to downplay the severity of the problem – thus the number of deaths caused by the pandemic may very well be higher than suggested by official counts.

How deadly is COVID-19?

No certainty here either. The relative danger of a disease can be measured by its case fatality rate – the number of deaths as a proportion of those infected – or the mortality rate, which measures the number of deaths as a proportion of the population. A case fatality rate of 4 percent indicates that for every 100 people infected the disease causes an average of four deaths.

The available estimates of COVID-19’s case fatality rate vary all too widely according to context. On the one hand, such variations could in fact be tied to local factors: for example, the disease is likely to have a greater impact in regions or countries where the population is older or more prone to respiratory illnesses, such as heavily polluted Northern Italy. Alternatively, such variations may only be apparent, and caused by differences in how data is collected. The case fatality rate compares two figures – deaths and infections – but, as we have seen, these figures are often recorded in different ways, and often contain significant gaps.

In any case, COVID-19’s case fatality rate is an order of magnitude greater than that of more mundane viral illnesses, such as seasonal flu. The latter typically causes the death of fewer than 0.1 percent of people infected, over many months, while it is estimated that COVID-19 causes an at least twenty or thirty times higher percentage of deaths, over just a few weeks. 

Two useful techniques for comparing data

Apart from the gaps and disparities in data collection, comparisons between regions and countries affected by the coronavirus are complicated by the fact that contagion didn’t start everywhere at the same time. Comparing Hubei province in China – where infection began around a month ago – with a country where contagion has just begun would not be particularly instructive. In order to compare such contexts, we should start with the day when the outbreak was registered in each area, and compare developments from there. For example, 15 days after the virus broke out in Italy, around 800 deaths had been recorded there, while in Spain, 15 days after the virus was detected in its territory, 2000 deaths had been recorded.

Another way to compare developments in countries with different data collection methods is to compare the rates of contagion in each country – for example, measuring the number of days it took for the number of confirmed deaths to double. In Germany, the figure doubled every two days, and in Italy every five days. In South Korea it has taken 13 days for the number of confirmed deaths to double, indicating that contagion has slowed down considerably.

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