Tag: media freedom

North Macedonia Editor Faces Charges of Revealing Official Secrets

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Media unions and watchdogs in North Macedonia have said they want to look into why a news portal editor has been charged with revealing official secrets.

The owner and editor-in-chief of Ekonomski Lider news portal, Ljupcho Zlatev, is accused of publishing two articles in July in which he has revealed classified documents from the former Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, UBK, which was recently been transformed into Agency for National Security, ANB, and which he obtained illegally. He faces up to five years in prison if found guilty.

The two texts, published on July 9 and July 12, refer to a former employee of the now-defunct UBK who did not pass the security checks needed to transfer into the newly formed ANB.

Allegedly, this was because his father had participated in street protests against the change of the country’s name, which parliament had approved in early 2019, as part of a historic agreement with Greece.

“In both texts, the accused made available to the public copies of UBK documents – acts from operational checks on a person – which are listed as classified info,” the prosecution in Skopje said on Thursday.

The ANB was formed in 2019 under a law supported by both the government and opposition to replace the notorious secret police, the UBK, which was at the centre of an illegal wiretapping scandal in 2015.

To strengthen oversight over its work, the ANB no longer operates as part of the Interior Ministry but as an independent government body. It also no longer has police powers or is in charge of the technical process of surveillance, which was given to a separate agency.

But, as most of its employees come from the old UBK, a selection or vetting process was introduced to ensure that old corrupt para-intelligence structures did not get through.

Zlatev, who was seen as part of the PR machinery of former PM Nikola Gruevski and often perceived as a propagandist rather than a journalist, defended his action on social networks, saying that he had acted in the public interest.

Over the past two years, seven complaints of unethical and unprofessional conduct have been filed against Zlatev to the Journalistic Council of Ethics, a self-regulation body.

“I published [the texts] because after one father attended the protests against the change of name [to the country], his son lost his security certificate and the chance to work in the ANB,” he wrote.

“This UBK construct is a classic blow to citizens’ political freedoms and big public interests, so that is why I published the documents that a whistle-blower gave me.

“If I got similar documents now, I would also publish them without thinking twice!!! I could repeat the act because freedom and democracy are more important to me than any legal provision,” Zlatev added.

The country’s oldest and biggest media union, the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, ZNM, said it would look into the case and demand answers from the prosecution.

“We don’t know all the details of the case and analysis needs to be done. But every time a case is opened by the prosecution in the domain of freedom of expression and the right to inform, it can be problematic,” ZNM head Mladen Cadikovski told 360 Degrees news portal on Thursday.

“The public interest can be stronger than the law if publication reveals the misuse of certain institutions. We are demanding a meeting with [chief] prosecutor [Ljubomir] Joveski on several topics, and this will be one of the issues that we wish to discuss,” Cadikovski added.

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.

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.

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.

Croatian PM Accused of ‘Shameful’ Accusations Against Journalist

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Andrej Plenkovic was accused of “shameful” behaviour for claiming during Monday’s pre-election debate on the private RTL channel that a journalist from the Croatian public broadcaster, Maja Sever, prepared his political rival Davor Bernardic for the televised showdown.

“Shameful behaviour by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, who accused colleague Maja Sever of working for the [opposition] SDP [Social Democratic Party] during a debate with Davor Bernardic on RTL. Unworthy of the office of Prime Minister,” Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, wrote on Twitter.

Zovko also claimed that Plenkovic constantly accuses journalists of working for the opposition.

But Plenkovic told reporters on Tuesday that this was not an attack on Sever, who he said he respects.

“If anyone has a feeling for journalists, then I have,” Plenkovic said.

The long-awaited TV debate ahead of this Sunday’s elections saw the two likeliest candidates for the next prime minister face each other in the studio – Plenkovic from the ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and Social Democratic Party, SDP president Bernardic.

During the debate, Plenkovic asked Bernardic if Sever prepared him for the show, because Bernardic came to the studio with a sheaf of documents, which included data and graphs that he tried to use to prove the failures of Plenkovic’s government.

Sever is president of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and a longtime journalist with Croatian public broadcaster HRT. She collaborates with the host and editor of the HRT talk show ‘Nedjeljom u dva’ (‘Sunday at 2 pm’), Aleksandar Stankovic, on which Plenkovic was a guest on June 14.

During that show, Stankovic confronted Plenkovic with some of his unfulfilled promises. Afterwards, according to media reports, Stankovic received criticism from his superiors for attacking the prime minister too much.

On Monday evening, Sever wrote on social media that before the HRT show on June 14, she and Stankovic prepared a few graphs and a list of Plenkovic’s statements and promises from the 2016 election campaign.

“It is an ordinary and simple journalistic job. I emphasise journalistic… The comments by the president of the HDZ [Plenkovic], who permits himself to say… that I was preparing someone for debate, is another attack by Andrej Plenkovic on independent journalism,” Sever wrote.

On June 23, Plenkovic also accused N1 TV journalist Hrvoje Kresic of agitating for the opposition after Kresic asked him if he would go into self-isolation when it was revealed that he had been in contact with tennis player Novak Djokovic, who was infected with coronavirus during a tennis tournament in Zadar in Croatia.

“I know you like to agitate for a team that you would like to not be in opposition, but in power,” Plenkovic told the N1 reporter. Kresic replied that he was not agitating but asking questions as a journalist.

The Croatian Journalists’ Association responded to this by saying that Plenkovic should stop making “inadmissible accusations against journalists who ask legitimate questions”.

“Journalists work neither for the government nor for the opposition, they work exclusively in the public interest,” the association said.

Freedom of Information Curbs Alarm Rights Activists in Hungary

Posted on by BIRD

The Hungarian government’s decision to limit the application of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, is fueling fear among the opposition and civil society organisations that human rights face further curbs in the country.

Justified by the need to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the authorities can now use the personal data of citizens without clear regulations about when they can use it, and for what purpose.

Viktor Orban’s government has also additionally limited information access by extending the deadline for public institutions to provide requested data through FOI regulations from 15 to 45 days. The deadline can be prolonged for another 45 days meaning one could have to wait up to 90 days for answers – another step backwards in terms of media freedom.

The government says both decisions will be revoked once the state of the emergency, imposed on March 11, is lifted.

But rights groups and the opposition now fear a repeat of events in 2015. In that year, the Orban government introduced controversial “crisis” measures to stop an influx of migrants that are still in force today – despite the dramatic decline in the number of migrants and refugees coming to Hungary since then.

‘Crisis’ measures that risk becoming permanent


Attila Peterfalvi. Photo: Wikimedia commons/BudayLilla 

The government restricted data protection rights as stipulated by the GDPR and the Act on Freedom of information on May 4.

It imposed a state of emergency on 11 March and extended it indefinitely on March 31.

Under the state of emergency, the government has the authority to govern through decrees, while parliament is suspended.

The latest changes come after several international reports highlighted serious declines in the quality of Hungarian democracy and press freedom.

The Nations in Transit report, issued in May by the watchdog organisation Freedom House, notably ranked Hungary as the only non-democracy in the whole of the EU.

“Hungary’s decline has been the most precipitous ever tracked in Nations in Transit; it was one of the three democratic frontrunners as of 2005, but in 2020 it became the first country to descend by two regime categories and leave the group of democracies entirely,” the report said.

The Press Freedom Index released by the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders ranked Hungary in the lowest place for press freedom in the EU.

It said access to information was becoming ever more difficult for independent journalists, who are now banned from freely putting questions to politicians or from attending many events.

Now, not only do Hungarian institutions have 90 days instead of 30 to answer an FOI request, – triple the previous length – but requests related to privacy will remain unanswered until the state of emergency is lifted.

This may mean journalists waiting three months to get access to vital information. And, with so many things happening fast during the state of emergency, the risk is that the information will become irrelevant or outdated.

The government justified the much longer deadline to answer FOI requests by claiming that keeping to the 15-day deadline could “endanger the fulfilment of the [relevant institution’s] public tasks in relation to the emergency”, so the decree says.

When it comes to the suspended GDPR articles, they include: the right of access by the data subject; the right to erasure (the “right to be forgotten”); the right to restriction of processing; for information to be provided when personal data are collected from the data subject, or information to be provided when personal data have not been obtained from the data subject.

Important information on the way the authorities obtain personal data, its purpose, and how it is processed, protected, or shared with other authorities, will now only become available when the state of emergency ends.

The authorities insist concern about these changes is needless. In response to a query from BIRN, Attila Peterfalvi, chair of the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, said the decree applies only to requests for data in relation to the battle against the coronavirus, and that the data controller will also have to prove why they wish to apply the special regulation.

Peterfalvi noted also that GDPR gives participating states the right to restrict its provisions. The decree doesn’t actually take away any rights, or the right to remedy, but only delays their execution until the end of the state of emergency, he stressed.

Officials also point out that they will lift the state of emergency when it is no longer needed.

But opposition politicians and rights groups are not persuaded. They recall that the “crisis” measures imposed to stop illegal migration in 2015 were prolonged again and again – and still remain effective – long after the number of migrants attempting to cross Hungary decreased drastically.

Worryingly broad legislation


Illustration. Photo : EPA-EFE/Zoltan Balogh

The 30-day GDPR deadline to answer COVID-19-related data subject requests will resume once the state of emergency ends. This means that, until then, if someone submits a request related to COVID-19, or lodges an objection against the processing of his personal data related to COVID-19, the data controller is not required to take any steps to erase the data, rectify the data, or restrict its processing.

Furthermore, the legislation does not define the exact categories of personal data or the type of data controllers that fall under it.

As a result, any data controller taking part in the fight against COVID-19, or processing COVID-19-related personal data, can interpret the new legal provisions widely and broaden its restrictions to apply to as much personal data as possible.

Ádam Remport, data protection expert at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, an NGO, told BIRN that he believes the decree suspends fundamental rights, which the GDPR does not allow for.

The wording of the decree is too general and its reasoning too weak, he adds.

Remport said the GDPR is very strict about when member countries can suspend its application.

He notes that the GDPR says a restriction may only be imposed if it “respects the essence of the fundamental rights and freedoms”, and if this restriction “is a necessary and proportionate measure in a democratic society”.

Remport says the total suspension of certain rights does not fit into this category. He adds that while the decree indicates the purpose of the legislation, all the other reasoning is missing.

“The decree should list explicitly to which data and data controller it applies. It should at least justify why there is no such list,” he said.

In its current form, he added, the decree is too wide-ranging and can be applied to anything, from healthcare to the economy.

The GDPR also demands the right to an effective remedy, a right which cannot be suspended, he said. “According to the European Convention on Human Rights, and the GDPR, a remedy is real if it provides an effective judicial remedy.

“The wording of the decree doesn’t contradict this directly, as in theory one can still appeal. But until the state of emergency ends, nobody can go to court,” he pointed out.

“Nobody knows when the emergency will end, so we can’t call this an effective remedy; it is not a real remedy,” he concluded.

FOI rights undermined for years


Illustration. Photo: Pxfuel

As state communication become more centralized in Hungary – and effectively censored during the COVID-19 emergency, according to one NGO report, FOI requests have become ever more important as tools for journalists to extract relevant information about state operations.

Miklos Ligeti, legal director of Transparency International Hungary, told BIRN that the government in Budapest has been undermining this right for years.

“The Hungarian government has continuously restricted access to public data since 2013. From this point of view, the new decree is not a novelty,” he said.

The only guaranteed way to gain access to public data was via the courts, Ligeti added. “Now the time one has to wait before going to court has been prolonged,” he continued.

According to Transparency International, the decree goes against the constitution, as the right to freedom of information it refers to implies fast and timely access – while waiting months for an answer is anything but.

Since 2013, according to the government, FOI requests can be rejected if they are too “comprehensive”, as over-detailed questions are deemed a “misuse” of FIOA rights.

To decide what question is too detailed is, again, up to the data owner. The next restriction, which followed in 2015, allowed data owners to bill the information requester for “reimbursement of expenses”, if replying to the request involves “a disproportionate amount of work” for the relevant institution.

Tamas Bodoky, founder and editor-in-chief of Átlátszó, an investigative portal, told BIRN that the new moves were yet another attempt to restrict the FOI law.

“This is the third time the Orbán government is restricting FOI. This tendency, and the suspension of the GDPR Articles are the real concern – not that we might have to wait longer to get information,” Bodoky said.

Bodoky notes that if institutions demand reimbursement for work, “it is usually around 5,000 to -20,000 forints [14 to 60 euros]. To pay this money is not a problem for a lawyer or an editorial. But the intention behind this is to prevent citizens from using this tool to control power”.

His investigative portal has developed a tool through which users can send FOI requests to any public body.

According to him, data owners rarely demand “unreasonable” sums of money for reimbursement. If they do, or the info request is denied, “one can go to court. But that takes time and costs money, and people cannot afford it”.

Fortunately, he adds, judges usually favour making data public. But sometimes, despite a court judgment, data owners still withhold the data. “In that case, we remain without means, as public prosecutors will do nothing to enforce the verdict,” Bodoky warned.

Átlátszó uses FOI requests a lot for its investigations, and has faced various other methods by which state institutions hide information.

“Once the cabinet office of the Prime Minister sent us documents that were photocopied so many times – or maybe digitally blurred – that they were barely readable,” Bodoky recalled. “This shows clearly what the Hungarian government thinks about freedom of information,” he adds.

Miklós Ligeti says the broad implications of the latest moves are more concerning than their exact detail.

“If we look at the big picture, we see that the lack of reliable data makes rational public conversation impossible,” he warned. “Once there is no information, citizens cannot make responsible political decisions,” he concluded.

COVID-19 Worsening Environment for Media Freedom, Report Warns

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Journalists across Eastern Europe, the Balkans but, increasingly also in Western Europe, faced a new level of threats, harassment and risk of imprisonment during 2019, according to the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists, in a report presented on Wednesday by 14 organisations partnered in the platform.

The report, “Attacks on media in Europe Must Not Become the New Normal”, states that about 140 alerts were filed with the platform during 2019, including 103 from Turkey, 21 from Serbia and 11 from Albania.

A disputed media law in Albania proposed by Prime Minister Edi Rama last year, the closure of the last remaining critical TV shows and the harassment of journalists by pro-government media resulted in Albania getting a separate chapter in the report, meaning also that Albania was added to the list of countries of special concern.

Sarah Clarke, from Article 19, said the report noted SLAPP cases as a major concern. These Strategic Litigations Against Public Participation are lawsuits against journalists or activists in which plaintiffs use their financial power to drag critics into lengthy court processes that then encourage others in the media to practise self-censorship.

“There has been an elevated threat from the political level and juridical harassment against journalists. We included SLAPPS as a concern for the first time,” Clarke said.

Meanwhile, the new coronavirus pandemic has caused a whole new set of concerns, said Scott Griffen, from the International Press Institute. He said there had been a systemic attempt by several governments to control the narrative of the pandemic, referring to Hungary and other states.

“Hungary has criminalized the distribution of ‘distorted facts’”, Griffen said, adding that this could amount to a “criminalization of journalism”. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Serbia have also seen arrests for reports on the spread of the new coronavirus that annoyed the authorities.

Ricardo Gutierrez, General Secretary of European Federation of Journalists, said the collapse of advertising revenues in the media across Europe due to COVID-19 had left thousands of journalists unemployed and left tens of thousands of freelancers without any real income. “COVID-19 is causing a global collapse of press freedom,” Gutierrez warned.

William Horsley, from the Association of European Journalists, said media ownership was another worrying issue. Standards were deteriorating across the continent, he said, urging EU member states to “be particularly strict over its standards”.

“There is an increasing shift of media ownership toward governments and governments partners, the so-called oligarchs,” Horsley noted.

Bulgaria was singled out as a country where the media has been captured by oligarchs. “A major share of the country’s newspaper distribution business is under the control of a single conglomerate, owned by a politician. Independent journalists and media outlets are regularly subject to intimidation in person and online,” the report noted. Meanwhile, out of 135 journalists currently jailed or under detention, 91 of these are in Turkey.

‘It’ll be Bloody’: Under Jansa, Troubled Times for Slovenian Media

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The spread of COVID-19 and the return to power of veteran right-winger Janez Jansa are contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists in Slovenia, media watchdogs are warning.

Jansa, an anti-immigration ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, returned for a third stint as prime minister on March 13, a little over a week after Slovenia confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus that has since killed 79 people in the former Yugoslav republic.

He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January. The change of power coincided with what the International Press Institute, IPI, says is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.

Jansa himself has taken to Twitter to denounce the Slovenian public broadcaster; his government has sought to portray mainstream media outlets as heirs of the Yugoslav-era communist security services, while the government’s Crisis Headquarters tasked with coordinating the fight against COVID-19 has retweeted anonymous attacks on investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.

“This is, in a way, a defeat in the field of democracy,” said Slovenian political scientist Alem Maksuti. “[Slovenian] media are coming under tremendous pressure, while like any other media they must simply objectively inform the public what’s going on.”

“And once again this thesis has emerged that authoritarian regimes which want to establish greater power are taking on those who have different opinions,” Maksuti told BIRN.

Governments exploiting pandemic to curb media freedoms


A cyclist wearing protective mask passes in the almost empty Preseren square, in Ljubljana. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

In mid-March, Zgaga, an investigative reporter and correspondent for the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, RSF, complained to IPI that he had been the target of a smear article in a news weekly close to Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS, after he had asked the government about the operations and structure of a newly-founded Crisis Headquarters created by the government to lead the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Headquarters did not respond. Instead, its official Twitter account retweeted an anonymous attack on Zgaga describing him as having “escaped from quarantine” and carrying a “COVID-Marx/Lenin virus,” a play on a common smear by the Slovenian right-wing against its opponents on the left or centre. Zgaga also received anonymous, online death threats.

On April 17, RSF and six other press freedom organisations urged the European Commission – the executive arm of the European Union, of which Slovenia is a member – to do everything in its power to guarantee the safety of the Zgaga and ensure that “death threats and attacks against him are treated with the utmost seriousness by the Slovenian authorities.”

“Despite the unprecedented context in which Slovenia and other countries currently find themselves, the COVID-19 crisis shouldn’t be an excuse to prevent journalists from doing their job,” RSF said, echoing the deep concern felt by media watchdogs over press freedoms across Central and Eastern Europe since the onset of the pandemic.

‘Unjustified attacks’ on public broadcaster


Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology Zdravko Pocivalsek speaks to the media during the reception of the first batch of a seven-ton shipment of personal protection equipment from Quingdao, China. Photo: EPA-EFE/IGOR KUPLJENIK.

Zgaga, however, was not the only target.

On March 20, the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists reported that Jansa had used social media to accuse public broadcaster Radiotelevizija Slovenija, RTVS, of spreading lies about the government. He issued a veiled threat over its funding.

RTVS Director General Igor Kadunc denounced what he said were “grossly unjustified attacks” on RTVS coverage aimed to the “subordination of the central media to one political option.”

Spela Stare, secretary general of the Slovene Association of Journalists, DNS, noted that at the outset of the pandemic, the government had sought to halt journalists from asking questions at its regular COVID-19 press conferences. RTVS was supposed to simply broadcast the statements of speakers.

“Journalists could only send the questions in advance via email. No real-time questions,” Stare told BIRN. “We protested, of course, and demanded at least video conferences for questions.”

The government backed down, to a degree, allowing journalists to pose questions from a separate location or submit them in advance.

“Not ideal, but better than what was first announced,” Stare said, while noting that the opportunity for follow-up questions had clearly become limited.

For Slovenian media, trouble ahead


Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT.

Not long after the protest from the Council of Europe’s protection of journalism platform, a reply appeared on the platform’s site from Slovenia’s mission to the CoE, questioning the journalistic standards of Slovenian media and claiming that “the majority of the main media in Slovenia have their origins in the former Communist regime and even in the late 1990s the positions of editors-in-chief were held by the former members of the infamous security service UDBA.”

The Slovene Association of Journalists denounced the letter as having “no basis in reality.”

“It only reflects the ideological views of the biggest government party and smears Slovenia’s reputation internationally,” the association said.

Maksuti said the government was trying to “invent an enemy that has been dead for years – Communism.”

Foreign Minister Anze Logar defended the wording of the response, which he said was drawn up by a government communications office, telling parliament that the government had faced significant criticism in the media in its first month in office.

Journalists he ran into, Logar said, “do not seem scared… I did not see fear in their eyes.”

With the next parliamentary election due in 2022, Maksuti said the future of Jansa’s four-party coalition government was hard to predict.

“I think politics will be closer to what we can see in Hungary, Poland or Slovakia,” he said, “where some of the civilisational steps we’ve made are becoming issues again – abortion, same-sex marriage and so on.”

Jansa’s government is working on a package of laws, part of which Maksuti said may seek to abolish licence fees for the public broadcaster and give more prominence and improved frequencies to media seen, he said, as “party extensions” of Jansa’s SDS.

“In the media field, it’ll be bloody,” Maksuti said.

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