Tag: balkan insight

Hungarian Index’s Fate in Balance as Most Reporters Quit

Posted on by BIRD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Index Sacking Worsens Pressure on Hungary’s Free Media

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Hungary’s largest and most widely read online news site may be the next victim in the fight for press freedom in Central Europe, after Index’s editor-in-chief, Szabolcs Dull, was unexpectedly fired on Wednesday by the president of the foundation that owns it.

The official explanation for Dull’s removal was that, as editor-in- chief, he had created unfavourable market conditions by communicating – a month ago – that the news site’s independence was at stake.

Dull met with the editorial team on Wednesday and said he had been offered a substantial amount of money “if he kept his mouth shut”. He said he declined the offer and instead pleaded for “his colleagues not to be silent”.

Index has no new editor-in chief at the moment; most eyes are on Dull’s predecessor, senior editor Attila Tóth-Szenesi, who is respected by his colleagues.

Dull told his final meeting with colleagues that there had been a lot of pressure on the editorial team recently, but that most of the outside criticism was not based on the content but on the organization of the news site. A few weeks ago, a controversial business plan was leaked that aimed to cut the editorial team into shreds and remove much of its independence. The restructuring would was necessary to keep the company afloat, some members of the board of directors had reportedly argued.

But, according to BIRN’s sources, the site’s financial problems have been over-estimated and exaggerated by some members of the board to put the journalists under pressure. “The money that they said Index owes the sales house could easily have been paid back, but then they came up with further demands, just to keep up the pressure,” one journalist told BIRN earlier.

Index is owned by a foundation, but all its revenues come through the sales house, Indamedia, which is currently owned by two managers close to the government of Viktor Orban. One of them, Miklós Vaszily, is also the chairman of the government-close private television TV2, and played a role at “taming” Origo, the other main online news site, some years ago.

Since Vaszily obtained 50 per cent of the shares in Index’s saleshouse in mid-March, most journalists were aware that the government was preparing for a push against the remaining flagship for independent journalism in Hungary.

Hungary’s governing Fidesz party has an impressive track record when it comes to silencing critical media. It mostly relies on a strategy of sticks and carrots: instead of directly cracking down on disobedient media, it hires loyal businessmen to act as middlemen.

It also conceals its political motives with the excuse of the media outlet’s financial difficulties – mostly created by its own distortion of the advertising market. Government-loyal media receive as much as 87 per cent of all state advertising, regardless of the number of their readers, research done by the Mérték Media Monitor Institute has indicated.

Moldovan Journalists Accuse Russian Peacemakers in Transnistria of Assault

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Two Moldovan journalists, Viorica Tataru and her colleague, Andrei Captarenco, both working for TV8 station, filled a complaint on Tuesday to the police Inspectorate in Dubasari after claiming that Russian peacemakers and Transnistrian border guards had assaulted them while doing their job.

“I have had previous incidents with them, but this time they became violent. One hit my hand and I dropped the phone, after which he took it from me and started deleting videos and pictures. The so-called peacemaker was very aggressive,” Tataru told BIRN.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the breakaway regime in Transnistria illegally erected 37 new checkpoints in the so-called Security Zone, the buffer zone separating Moldova from the breakaway region. The two journalists were shooting a video at one of the checkpoints when the trouble started.

Tataru said her mobile phone was only returned after the Russian soldier erased all her photos and videos, and only after a threat to summon the Moldovan police.

The incident did not stop here. Russian soldiers followed the journalists on to the ferry they had to take to cross the Dniester River back to Moldova. Tataru said she suspected the soldiers intended to detain them. They told the journalists to get off the ferry, to which the journalists reportedly responded that they were only doing their job and could not agree with this request as neither the Russian nor the Transnistrian soldiers had the competence or authority to ask them for such a thing.

“In the end, I cried and told people I didn’t understand their [passive] reaction: we will leave, but you stay here. Why do you accept and keep your heads down? … you will remain here with the same problems,” Tataru told BIRN, recalling her words to her fellow passengers.

The incident ended after an hour of negotiations on the ferry, and only after some Moldovan veterans from war in 1992 intervened and the local police arrived at the dock.

The breakaway region of Transnistria has been de facto separated from the rest of the country since the so-called Dniester War in 1992. The pro-Russian regime has since then proclaimed its independence and sought to become a part of the Russian Federation. Mediated talks have achieved little.


The Moldovan journalists, Andrei Captarenco and Viorica Tataru, filing a complaint at the police station in Dubasari. Photo: Viorica Tataru Facebook page

“It is another abuse on the part of the Transnistrian police on Moldovan territory … and we can only condemn it,” the director of the Independent Press Association, API, Petru Macovei, told BIRN.

He added that the situation showed again that things had not moved on from the current deadlock, and that the constitutional rights of Moldovan citizens often remain violated, even while the national authorities in Moldova are silent about it.

“The current government [in Moldova] is trying in every way to cover up such incidents out of electoral interest, or out of its servile attitude towards Russia,” Macovei concluded.

“This incident, in addition to being a restriction on freedom of expression and journalistic freedom, highlights an older issue: the status of the peacekeeping mission in the Transnistrian region of Moldova,” a human rights lawyer, Pavel Cazacu, from the Chisinau-based NGO Promo-LEX, told BIRN.

The peace settlement of the Transnistrian War in 1992 gave a peacemaking mission, which combines about 1,500 Russian, Moldovan and Ukrainian peacemakers, the right to remain in the Security Zone.

Cazacu noted that Promo-LEX had constantly called for the transformation of this structure into an international civilian mission.

“I believe that this incident will be a test for the constitutional authorities of Moldova, and such behaviour towards journalists must be vehemently condemned,” Cazacu concluded.

Turkish Ruling Party Announces Strict Controls on Social Media

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The Justice and Development Party, AKP announced on Tuesday that it will bring in a long-awaited new law to regulate social media more strictly and potentially impose large fines and bandwidth reductions on companies that do not comply with government demands.

“Closing social network providers is not our first priority. We have five levels of sanctions,” Ozlem Zengin, the AKP group deputy chairperson, told media.

She added that other countries such as the US, Germany and France are eyeing similar regulations but said that “there is still not an agreement on social media regulations [in international law]”.

“Violations of the right of privacy require sanctions,” Zengin added.

The new law will require social media companies to appoint an official representative in Turkey who will answer the government’s demands including the removal of “harmful content” in a timely manner.

If an official representative is not appointed or the demands are not answered, there are a series of potential penalties.

A company will first face a fine of 10 million Turkish lira fine (1.27 million euros) and then of 30 million lira (3.80 million euros).

If it still does not comply, it will face an advertisement ban for three months.

As a final sanction, its bandwidth will be halved and then cut by 95 per cent.

Citizens also can apply to social media companies if they claim their rights have violated and in this case, the fine will be 5 million lira (636,000 euros).

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of harsh new regulations several weeks ago after he was angered by insults to members of his family on social media.

“Such platforms don’t suit this country and our people. That’s why we want these social media platforms completely shut or controlled after bringing the issue to our parliament,” Erdogan said on July 1.

Opposition parties and human rights groups see the new law as the president’s latest attempt to control media platforms and silence his critics.

The Turkish government has earlier asked social media companies to move their servers to Turkey.

The new regulations might result in these companies quitting the Turkish market, experts have warned.

The draft law on social media was introduced in April but was then postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The law is expected to come to parliament soon, before the summer recess.

North Macedonia Probes Election Day Cyber Attacks

Posted on by BIRD

Authorities in North Macedonia have announced an investigation into election day’s cyber attack while experts are still puzzled about how the attack occurred on July 15, targeting the website of the state election commission, SEC, and the news aggregator website.

“It is not clear whether the [SEC] website was tested to withstand a large amount of connections for a short period of time, and whether it had the necessary DDoS protection,” cyber-security engineer Milan Popov told BIRN on Friday.

The Interior Ministry confirmed that it is looking into the matter. “The SEC reported the case and, immediately after the report, the Sector for Computer Crime and Digital Forensics took measures and activities to clear up the case,” ministry spokesman Toni Angelovski told BIRN.

Polling day on July 15 saw two of the highest profile cyber attacks the country has ever seen. In a single night, both the election commission’s website and the most popular news aggregator, TIME.mk, were brought down for several hours.

While TIME.mk quickly recovered, the SEC website is still having difficulties functioning. According to the SEC head, Oliver Derkovski, the attack probably came from abroad.

“We informed the Interior Ministry about this cybercrime. They were here today and I hope they will resolve it soon. It was an attack from abroad,” Derkovski said.

The IT company that runs the SEC election results page section, Duna Computers, said its own application functions flawlessly and the main issue came from the SEC website experiencing a sophisticated cyber attack.

The second cyber attack of the night, the denial of service, DDoS, attack that hit TIME.mk, involved more than 35 million addresses that generated thousands of clicks per second.

“There were brief interruptions but mostly the site withstood the attack. Unfortunately, we did not have the best protection, and this was our mistake, which we have corrected, so that it will not happen again,” the website’s founder, Igor Trajkovski, wrote on Twitter.

“I can say for sure that, for the second part of the attack, someone is connected to one of the sites that we index, because that is the only way through which they can find out our IP address,” Trajkovski added.

Unlike the SEC cyber attack, responsibility for this one was claimed by a hacker group that uses a logo similar to that of the famous hacktivist group Anonymous, and calls itself “Anonopsmkd”.

The group left a message in which it voiced displeasure with the election process in the country, and said it had targeted the TIME.mk website mostly because of its popularity. Regarding the group itself, information is scarce. However, in their message, they warned ominously that they are ready to strike again, and that they “neither forgive nor forget”.

North Macedonia Election Commission ‘Cyber-Attacked During Polls’

Posted on by BIRD

The website of North Macedonia’s State Electoral Commission, SEC, suffered an alleged denial-of-service, DDoS, attack for more than three hours during the parliamentary elections on Wednesday.

The attack delayed the SEC’s announcement of the official results of the tightly-contested vote on its website and it had to improvise by releasing partial results through YouTube clips instead.

SEC officials insisted that the alleged attack did not affect the data that they had been collecting throughout the day.

“From what I know so far, this was an attempted external attack. But until this is confirmed, I cannot speculate, we will know more about it tomorrow [Thursday]. The data wasn’t attacked and no damage was caused in the process,” SEC President Oliver Derkovski told a press conference.

At the same time as the SEC suffered the alleged attack, the country’s most popular news aggregator TIME.mk was also targeted by a heavy DDoS attack, which took the website down for a couple of hours. The site’s founder, Igor Trajkovski, said that Cloudflare, a US-based website security company, had to block millions of IP addresses involved in the attack.

“So far, Cloudflare has blocked three million IP addresses. And more new ones are appearing. We have never had such a DDOS attack before. Someone paid a lot of money to do this,” Trajkovski wrote on Twitter.

The attack was later claimed by a hacker group calling itself Anonymous Macedonia, which left a message on the website voicing displeasure with the election process, citing “empty promises from all political parties in this beautiful country”.

“We had yet another ‘democratic election process’, and as we can see, it is the same story repeating every three to four years,” the message said.

“It had to be your website because it has the highest number of visitors – no hard feelings,” It added.

With more than 90 per cent of the ballots counted, the ruling SDSM party was ahead of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE by some 10,000 votes.

Montenegro Activist Grilled for Facebook Post on Serbian Protests

Posted on by BIRD

Montenegrin police on Thursday questioned the civic activist and member of the “Odupri se (Resist)” movement, Omer Sarkic, for a Facebook post about the recent protests in Serbia.

In an ironic post, Sarkic called on the opposition Democratic front to stage protests in front of the Serbian embassy in Podgorica over police brutality against protesters in Belgrade. He stated a fictional press release in which the DF warned that it will resist police brutality in Serbia as it does in Montenegro.

“I explained to the police officer that my post was ironic, as I wanted to show that part of the opposition and Montenegrin media are silent about the protests in Belgrade. It’s sad that some police officer who was reading my Facebook posts didn’t understand what my nine-year-old son understood,” Sarkic said.

Serbian police this week have clashed with thousands of angry protesters in Belgrade and other cities against the official handling of the coronavirus crisis and the announced re-imposition of restrictive measures, including a curfew this weekend.

In Belgrade, they used tear gas to disperse the crowds. In Kragujevac, protesters smashed the windows of the local police building. Protesters in Novi Sad threw rocks and rubbish bins at the windows of the ruling Progressive Party facilities, at Radio Television of Vojvodina and at city hall.

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

But the violence in Serbia has thrown the mainly pro-Serbian opposition parties in Montenegro off balance. On July 8, Democratic Front MP Marina Jocic insisted that the police in Belgrade had been abused by the protesters, claiming there was no police brutality.

The Front has strong political ties with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party, SNS.

On June 25, Sakic was arrested with two opposition Democratic Front MPs and dozens of opposition supporters after violent protests rocked several towns in Montenegro.

Hundreds of people joined protests in Podgorica, Niksic, Bijelo Polje, Berane, Pljevlja, and Bar after an opposition mayor in the resort of Budva was arrested for refusing to hand over power despite losing control of the local assembly.

Activists and opposition politicians accused the police of breaching their powers during the arrests in Budva, after videos were published showing officers beating people in the streets even when they were not resisting arrest. Videos showed police kicking a man lying on the ground in Budva while another showed them kicking a young man even though he did not resist arrest.

Since January, there were several cases of arrests in Montenegro linked to posts on social networks. In separate cases, two Montenegrins and one Russian citizen were arrested for spreading fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic on social networks.

On April 9, police arrested an opposition Democratic Front activist for posting fake news about the health of President Milo Djukanovic, claiming he had the coronavirus. Radovan Rakocevic, from the town of Bijelo Polje, was put in custody for 72 hours for the offence of spreading panic.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak became more serious in Montenegro, there were arrests for spreading panic about it. On March 13, the Basic Court ordered 30 days in custody for Milivoje Brkovic for posting a message on Facebook that said state officials were hiding the real number of people suffering from the coronavirus. The country confirmed its first two cases on March 17.

Serbian Police Attack Journalists In Second Night of Clashes

Posted on by BIRD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romania Recognises Cyber Harassment as Form of Domestic Violence

Posted on by BIRD

As of July 9, Romania will recognise cyber harassment as a form of domestic violence under recently-adopted amendments to the country’s 2003 Law on Domestic Violence published in the Official Gazette on Monday, Romanian media reported.

The move follows a ruling against Romania in February by the European Court of Human Rights over the state’s failure to protect the Internet privacy of an abused woman whose Facebook profile and emails were accessed by her former husband.

There are frequent reports in the Romanian media of sexual violence against women and minors in which the perpetrators make first contact via social media.

Under the amendments, ‘cybernetic violence’ includes “online harassment, online messages that instigate hatred for reason of gender, online stalking, online threats, publication of information and intimate graphic content without consent, [and] … illegal interception of communications” of a digital or online nature.

The use of social networks or emailing services “with the aim of shaming, humiliating, provoking fear, threatening, [and] silencing the victim” of domestic abuse also constitutes cybernetic violence, under the new text of the law.

The changes task the National Agency for Equality of Opportunity between Women and Men with promoting research in the field of artificial intelligence that would help “prevent potential risks of technologies that perpetuate sexism, gender stereotypes and cybernetic violence”.

In an op-ed published on the news portal hotnews.ro, lawyers Monica Statescu and Simona Ungureanu hailed the amendments as “an important step in protecting a significant segment of the victims of aggressive behaviour online.”

The lawyers called for “the adoption of an explicit set of rules that incriminate any violent online activity regardless of the relation between the victim and the aggressor”.

Pandemic Worsens Crisis for Media in Central, Eastern Europe

Posted on by BIRD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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