Tag: media

Trump and COVID-19 Fuel North Macedonia’s Clickbait Boom

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Elena used to dream that one day she would head her own marketing agency.

She has been in marketing for five years and works for one of the ten biggest marketing agencies in North Macedonia, based in the capital Skopje. She started out as an account manager, working with small clients.

Elena, who describes herself as vibrant and ambitious, made quick progress after joining the agency and was assigned to a team working for bigger clients. She was given more responsibilities and went on training courses and attended lectures and conferences around Europe to acquire more skills so that one day she could move across to the creative side of the business.

But then the COVID-19 pandemic slashed the company’s revenues and transformed her job into something completely different. Since May this year, she has been reassigned to translating stories from English and Serbian media into Macedonian, and from Serbian into English, adjusting the content to create short, sensationalist articles with headlines that will catch a reader’s eye imediately – clickbait.

“I used to dream of one day creating a campaign for [US fashion designer] Marc Jacobs, now I just translate articles from dawn until dusk,” said Elena. “My boss lady says it’s the same thing, it’s just being a content writer – but is it?”


COVID-19 conspiracies shared on a website named Torix.info that publishes in the Croatian language. The website is part of the interests Aleksandar Filipovski shared on his Facebook page along with other similar websites, such as the currently inactive, German-language Newcome.net and the Serbian language BalkanEkspres.com. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska

The articles that are created at the marketing agency where Elena works end up being published on various websites with the aim of generating revenue from Google Ads, as well as being posted to a range of Facebook groups to drive click-throughs. BIRN is not naming the company in order to protect the anonymity of Elena, which is not her real name.

Elena showed BIRN her corporate and private emails dating from May 21 to October 2.

“Just take a look at one day in the office. Total brainwashing bullshit,” she said as she showed hundreds of emails sent to the 18 employees who survived staff cutbacks in July and have now been reassigned to work on the clickbait content, which they call “the dirty laundry”.

Asked to explain why they call it that, Elena responded sharply: “As a professional I find there are no ethics in what we are doing. No professional challenge, nor any excitement. I just need the job desperately,” she said.

“As a feminist and bisexual, I do not feel comfortable creating clickbait posts for articles like ‘You have no idea what she did to her boyfriend when she found out he was gay. Now he is paying the price before God,’” she explained.

She said the agency’s staff were shocked that the company’s director was willing to get involved in clickbait publishing. They have never told been the identity of the client or clients who are paying for the stories they produce, and the exact relationship between the agency and the websites that publish the articles is unclear.

According to Elena, the director simply told them: “For now, we will have to adapt. This what makes money, I didn’t invent it, but there are people with huge businesses that work exclusively with Google ads. This is the reality now.”

Back in 2016, world media reported how more than 100 websites had been set up in North Macedonia to target US readers ahead of that year’s presidential elections, most of them pumping out bogus stories aimed as boosting Donald Trump’s candidacy. Amazement was expressed at how young Macedonians, thousands of kilometres away from the US, were making money out of fake news about the American elections.

Four years later, some clickbait sites based in North Macedonia are still pumping out pro-Trump stories. But now entrepreneurs and companies with no political agenda have got involved, seeing an opportunity to earn easy money by mass-producing sensationalist content about the US elections and COVID-19 that will generate revenue from Google Ads.

BIRN spoke to four marketing agencies in North Macedonia that are now involved in creating clickbait content for international clients; two of them also create articles for domestic websites. With the country’s advertising and marketing business hit hard by the pandemic, they see it as one of the only ways to stay in business.

US elections change the agenda

US President Donald J. Trump participates in a ‘Make America Great Again Victory Rally’ campaign event at the Richard B. Russell Airport in Rome, Georgia, USA, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/BRANDEN CAMP

Around 60 per cent of the content created by the agency where Elena works was clickbait material about COVID-19 – emotional stories about survivors, poignant statements from doctors in hospitals, what world leaders have said on social media, what celebrities do or don’t do to protect themselves from the coronavirus, plus conspiracy theories and articles about famous people who think that COVID-19 doesn’t exist. Other topics included politics, health and beauty.

The stories, mostly translated from Serbian or Croatian tabloids’ websites, were generally presented with misleading headlines written in capital letters: “This is how the client wants it, our boss just says,” Elena explained.

On September 6, an email from the director set out a new priority for the agency’s employees: the mass production of clickbait articles about Donald Trump.

“Guys, as you know the US elections are coming. We have follow the trends and increase advertisements on Google Ads. That is what everyone is reading now. Trump, Trump, Trump, just follow that and US domestic policy,” the email said.

On October 6, another email from the director on October 2: “Please follow Donald Trump’s Twitter, too. Especially now he has COVID-19. The client wants headlines adapted from the videos he shares. Try to get hold of tweets that are crazier, or the ones in which he mocks the liberals, i.e. his opponents,” it said.

Elena noted that the clients are not interested in having just any story on Trump, but prefer positive content. She and her co-workers were introduced to at least 20 Facebook groups with names like Trump for USA or Conservatives for Trump, which they were supposed to use as sources of content.

They were told they could use anything as source material for a clickbait article, even a meme. They were asked to deliver “at least 30 articles per day”, she said.

Elena said she saw at least five headlines she personally created were picked up by hundreds of other media outlets. She said she found the whole clickbait phenomenon disturbing.

“As a reader, I would not want the media and journalists to work like this,” she said. “As a marketing person, I never dreamed that we would do this. As a citizen, honestly, I find this a dangerous trend. This is becoming a big industry.”

Trump and the North Macedonian connection


The moto of TILT news is “conservatives uncensored”. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska

Among the suggestions that Elena and her colleagues were given for sources of content was a website named TiLT News, whose slogan is “Unfiltered Conservatism”. Her boss described it as a “great source, according to the client, aggregating the most important tweets and Facebook posts from US President Donald Trump”.

Some TiLT News headlines also took readers through to well-known US right-wing and pro-Trump sites like Breitbart News.

BIRN’s efforts to find out who is behind TiLT News led back to the notorious websites that operated out of the North Macedonian towns of Veles and Kumanovo during the 2016 US presidential elections, with the aim of affecting the outcome by targeting American readers with positive news about Trump and attacks on his opponent Hillary Clinton.

More than 100 websites with names like DonaldTrumpNews.co and USADailyPolitics.com were launched by a North Macedonian lawyer who was working with US conservative partners.

There is no data about the owner of TiLT News on the site due to protected anonymity, which can be bought for $15 a year from the Internet domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy. However, BIRN found that an email address that was used to register TiLT News, tamiterusa@hotmail.com, was also used to register some of the pro-Trump conservative clickbait websites in North Macedonia that were operating in 2016.

One of those involved was Aleksandar Filipovski, who in 2016 worked on producing pro-Trump articles on behalf of the US conservative lobby.

Links to Filipovski’s websites that were registered in 2015 and 2016 have since been removed from Facebook and Twitter. But his network of false Facebook accounts still exists, using PhotoShopped profile pictures that are hard to identify as modified fakes.

These fake accounts share TiLT News items to hundreds of US conservative groups’ Facebook pages, as well as to military veterans’ groups and other pro-Trump groups.

How the clickbait business works


In 2016, TiLT news published fake news claiming that former US President Barak Obama is an alien. At the time, the website was named the Tamiterusa blog. If you google TiLT news, you will only get results for Tamiterusa, most of which dates back to before the 2016 presidential elections. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska

To explain the clickbait business model, BIRN asked Aleksandar Velkovski, a 28-year-old bank official from Skopje who earns money on the side by running five different websites, three in English and two in Macedonian.

Velkovski said that after setting up their websites and paying the fee to keep their ownership anonymous, clickbait entrepreneurs need to acquire more than 30 fake Facebook profiles that they can use to promote their articles.

“Then [get the fake profiles to] join as many Facebook groups as possible because you’re not a real news brand, no one knows you and you just need the clicks so that Google Ads can work for you,” he said.


Silvi Trajanovska was an active profile in 2016. She has Macedonian friends, some of whom are fake profiles, but some are real. BIRN tracked her sharing and liking TiLT news, and became members in groups that share this and other conservative content but were not able to confirm whether this profile is real or not. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska

The fake profiles then post the clickbait articles in the Facebook groups. “From a group of 150,000 members, at least 30 per cent will click [on a clickbait link]. If the topic is currently ‘hot’, like the US elections or COVID, you can get around $100 to $300 out of one article from Google Ads,” he continued.

Velkovski doesn’t produce content himself, but orders it from various suppliers.

“I can pay a content provider for English news like $1,000 per month, and on top of that I have two more people from Skopje who I’m paying 400 euros each, and there is money left over for me as well. I’m not going to tell you exactly how much, but a bit more than double the costs.”


Silvi Trajanovska in one of the groups sharing TiLT news and other conservative news content. Screenshot: Saska Cvetkovska

Rosana Aleksovska, the director of F2N2, a fact-checking service that also investigates disinformation narratives, said that clickbait entrepreneurs are now not only promoting their sites using networks of fake profiles on Facebook and Twitter, but also now increasingly on Instagram and Telegram. “The bigger your social media platforms are, the bigger your earnings,” she said.

When it comes to disinformation campaigns, Aleksovska suggested that “most of this type of content is linked to conservative and extreme-right politics and opinions”. Some sites are ideologically-driven, some have murky connections to Russia. But other sites aren’t concerned about the politics of their content, she noted: “This is about money now, this has truly become a business.”

North Macedonia’s Media Ethics Council, an independent body, has been trying to address the issues of disinformation and political propaganda in media as well as pushing for transparency in media ownership. It runs the media transparency registry, where media ownership is listed, although disclosure is not compulsory under the law.

The council says it sometimes receives more than 100 complaints from the public each month.

“Most of the cases we receive are related to violations of Article 1 of the Code of Journalists, which refers to the publication of accurate and verified information, and in 39 per cent of reported cases this is the problem, while violations of Article 8 of the Code of Journalists, which refers to sensationalist information, were found in 35 per cent of the reported cases,” explained Katarina Sinadinovska, the president of the council.

‘Fake news’ and sensationalist stories are genuine worries for the public, Sinadinovska said: “You have a sea of unverified information, full of sensationalism, and we are not sure who makes the news anymore,” she pointed out.

Clickbait journalism as a career option


Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Nick Morrison

Lila Karjlieva, a young Macedonian journalist, until recently worked for a website in the capital Skopje that pumps out clickbait articles. When she went for the interview, she was not expecting her first job in journalism to be the greatest in North Macedonia, but what she was told by her prospective employer surprised her.

“‘You’re young and there’s plenty of time for real journalism; this is content creation, a different kind of journalism’ – this is what Filip told me when I asked why we were working from home. You know, I was expecting a real newsroom,” Karjlieva recalled. “I had been following that website for about four years, and I thought real reporters worked there.”

The three owners of the site all have day jobs: one runs his own business selling hot dogs in the best-known mall in Skopje, another one owns a small construction company and the third one is a public servant, running social media for the director of Skopje’s state-owned water supply company.

They also run two other websites that aim to churn out as much content as possible, because the more articles they publish, the more the potential revenue from Google Ads.

“We were given sources, mostly Serbian tabloids like Kurir, Informer, Blic and others, and our job was to make the articles seem different than they were [on the newspaper websites] and put clickbait headlines on them,” Karjlievasaid. “We had a quota, like 50 articles in an eight-hour period, but it was so easy.”

In the current media environment in North Macedonia, ‘real’ jobs are almost impossible to find, and producing clickbait content is one of the few options for young journalists, she explained.

“If you are looking for a job in media, it is more likely for a young person like me to choose to work for a website like this one for six hours a day and a 450-to-500-euro fee. Working from home and just doing nothing but copy-pasting and adjusting,” she said.

“The alternative is to find jobs that are not really available in real media like TV stations or NGOs. I said to myself: ‘Why not?’ And these days I can say that many of my peers do not feel this is wrong, they want to be like my owners.”

She said she has seen how easy it can to make money from clickbait sites: “If I had been ambitious about this, I swear to you that in two years from now I could have been running 15 websites like this, employing five people and earning as much as any big-shot, politically-connected Balkan editor-in-chief,” she declared.

It is already hard to attract young people to work in the media in North Macedonia because it’s such a politically-dominated environment, and the rise of the clickbait industry could make the problem worse, experts believe.

Maja Jovanovska, a member of North Macedonia’s Association of Journalists who works on the issue of the lack of young reporters in the country’s media, said that there are more than 100 websites in the country operating on the clickbait model – purely led by Google Ads’ algorithms, with no editorial ethics or standards.

“People’s access to genuine information is being limited,” said Jovanovska. “This is how we influence people’s lives, by giving them poor-quality information.”

Conspiracy theories become profitable

Karatseva left the website two months ago, not long after the owners announced an editorial shift towards political and coronavirus-related news.

“They gave us a list of sources, mostly very questionable sources, from Russia and Serbia, and the US and Croatia as well,” she recalled.

“Domestic news was also included, we were told that we should do news not just about every comment that the minister of health made on live TV or on Twitter or Facebook or in the press, but also even from the comments made about him. That attracts readers, the management said.”

She showed BIRN some of the articles that the site has been publishing recently – some of them praising the authorities’ COVID-19 policies, others condemning them; some of them advocating the idea of protecting oneself from the virus, others pushing conspiracy theories about it.

Indeed, conspiracy theories have become profitable online content in the age of the coronavirus.

Vasko, Meglen, and Vera are all 21-year-old students from Skopje and their job is to translate conspiracy theories from YouTube or other video platforms. BIRN is not naming the company in order to protect their anonymity.

At the company where they work, the employees are divided into two teams: one team of makes transcripts of conspiracy videos from YouTube, while the second team picks up news ideas from the videos and writes short articles or social media posts promoting the conspiracy theory.

“The stories are [about the] ‘deep state’ – anti-liberal, anti-government no matter where, anti-NGO, anti-international institutions like the IMF, the UN, the EU, NATO and, most recently, mostly COVID-does-not-exist conspiracies,” Vasko explained.

He said he found the job four years ago through adverts on LinkedIn and Freelancer.com seeking content writers. Several of his friends, mostly students, also signed up.

“I can earn like $1,500 for like nothing, no brain involved. But I study philosophy and there is a pattern in what we translate. We do not know what the company does this for, but during the COVID-19 crisis I’ve noticed some of the headlines I personally created in some shitty English-language media,” he said.

The company is registered outside North Macedonia and creates clickbait content to order, mostly for right-wing libertarian clients.

“Sorry about this,” he said, “but we’re doing it for the money.”

Saska Cvetkovska is an investigative reporter and media freedom activist. She is a co-founder of Investigative Reporting Lab – Macedonia, an OCCRP member center that fights disinformation with investigative reporting that uses interdisciplinary approaches, including technology and academic research. She serves at the Board of Directors of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting project. She was a lead reporter on investigstive project Spooks and Spin — Information Wars in the Balkans, about how Macedonia became a haven for propaganda.  Saska has won more than ten domestic and international journalism awards. In 2018 she was elected by Macedonian journalists to represent them on the board of directors of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, an organization that works to improve working conditions for reporters in the country.

This article has been produced as part of the Resonant Voices Initiative in the EU, funded by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund – Police. The content of this story is the sole responsibility of BIRN. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

Kosovo Political Activist ‘Misled Authorities’ to Get Media Commission Job

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Granit Musliu, who was elected as a member of the Independent Media Commission by MPs in the Kosovo Assembly on Monday, was recently active in the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, contrary to regulations prohibiting recent political involvement, BIRN has learned.

The IMC, which is responsible for the regulation, management and oversight of broadcasting frequencies in Kosovo, is under the direct authority of the Kosovo Assembly.

To be considered as a member, a candidate should not have been actively engaged in politics in the past two years. However, BIRN found that Musiu had been politically active as deputy head of the PDK’s youth wing in Skenderaj/Srbica and had participated in a PDK meeting this year.

Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) party MP Agon Batusha raised the issue on Tuesday at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Local Government, Public Administration, Regional Development and Media, arguing that Musliu should be dismissed from the IMC.

“We realised he had been active until the beginning of the pandemic. We as the Commission have been misled,” said Batusha.

The chairman of the IMC, PDK MP Mergim Lushtaku, said that he was informed that Musliu “resigned in September last year” from the position of deputy chairman of the PDK’s Democratic Youth of Kosovo.

But Valon Ramadani, an IMC member from Vetevendosje party, said that a report published on BIRN Kosovo’s Kallxo.com website made Musliu’s political affiliations with the PDK clear.

“I congratulate Kallxo.com that they did the news in such a way that they left us no doubts at all,” said Ramadani.

Pandemic Pushes Slovakia to Finally Target Disinformation

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Standing on the blue-backed stage of the Globsec Forum in Bratislava on October 7, wearing an elegant black mask coordinated with her dress, Slovak President Zuzana Caputova addressed the main challenges that the pandemic poses to the world and the rule of law.

“It has exposed the real capacities and limitations of our crisis management, which has rested in peace for years,” she said. “Once again, we have seen that the spread of disinformation and hoaxes can be deadly,” she added, pinpointing one of the most pressing issues for her country.

Slovakia has been battling hybrid threats and disinformation for years, with most of the fighting falling on the shoulders of non-governmental activists and information and security experts. This year, however, the destructive power of disinformation manifested itself palpably for the first time.

“Slovakia is not doing a very good job in battling the pandemic at the moment,” admitted Marek Krajci, the Slovak health minister, on October 9, explaining the ever-growing numbers of new COVID-19 cases in the country. “I think the huge disinformation campaign is reflected in the bad results that we’re seeing right now.”

Another major manifestation of the frustration and anger caused by disinformation about COVID was witnessed at the weekend, when hundreds of people joined an unannounced and illegal protest in Bratislava, organised by football hooligans and neo-Nazi groups. Attacking the iron gate of the governmental office compound, they chanted vulgar slogans about the prime minister, threw stones at the police and called for people to ignore the new restrictive measures designed to combat the virus.

While during the first wave of the pandemic Slovakia saw itself as a “winner” of the crisis, largely thanks to the responsible behaviour of the general public, strict early measures and obligatory masks, this autumn has brought a much stronger second wave than the country feared.

According to opinion polls, people in Slovakia are unsure what information about coronavirus they can trust, support for government-mandated restrictive measures has decreased significantly and, ultimately, so has their trust in government leaders.

“It would be easy to blame the media or education systems or the internet for the erosion of citizens’ confidence, but do political leaders today project trust?” President Caputova asked rhetorically at Globsec, opening an important question for her own country, too.

Slovak President Zuzana Caputova gives the opening address at the Globsec Bratislava Forum 2020. Photo: Globsec

A good start, but a long way to go

The new Slovak government that came into office in March defined countering disinformation and hybrid threats as one of its main goals for the next four years. In its manifesto, Igor Matovic‘s government named the fight against disinformation as a priority in foreign politics, defence, education and the media.

“The spreading of disinformation and hoaxes endangers the development of a knowledge-based society,” said the program of the new government. “The Government of SR will prepare an action plan for coordinating the fight against hybrid threats and spreading of disinformation, and build adequate centralised capacities to carry it out.”

Almost seven months later, this “action plan” is still a work in progress, the coordination centre is nowhere to be seen and the disinformation agenda is scattered among a few ministries, with no clear unified strategy in place.

“The first key thing that happened is that this theme has finally been addressed politically, and it is being given the proper attention,” Daniel Milo, an analyst at the Globsec Policy Institute, told BIRN.

“In previous years, there were some lonely fighters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or in the police, but there was no systematic support,” he said, adding that while it was good the new cabinet set as an official goal in its program the targeting of disinformation, it has yet to result in any concrete action.

One of the more visible efforts came this summer, when the Health Ministry hired Jakub Goda, a leading journalist focusing on disinformation, to help with its strategic communications. Reacting to the growing “infodemic” surrounding the coronavirus, the ministry is starting to focus on debunking hoaxes and sharing verified information from medical experts via social networks. “In the middle of the pandemic, the urgency of this problem became even clearer,” said Goda in an interview with BIRN earlier this month.

The Health Ministry prepared a short guide on how to see through disinformation about COVID-19, joined an information campaign by public broadcaster RTVS in which a leading expert on infectious diseases talked about the safety of wearing face masks, and recorded a video with COVID-19 patients sharing their personal experiences with the virus.

While the video registered an admirable 600,000 views with over 3,300 shares by October 19, the most viral posts from extremist politicians questioning the coronavirus crisis have been watched several times more, thanks to a developed network of dozens of Slovak Facebook pages that spread disinformation on a regular basis. The fight against disinformation by the Health Ministry is far from over, said Goda, adding that the ministry has already expanded capacities and more people should be hired soon.

Although Goda’s work at the ministry is essential, it is only a first step, experts think. “It is a good step, but to think that a single person will save the strategic communications of a whole ministry in such a big topic is naive,” said Milo.

“Jakub has dealt with these topics for years and I value him as a colleague, but this alone doesn’t stand a chance in stopping the enormous avalanche of lies about COVID-19 that are shared online and on social networks every day,” he explained. “However, he can do his part and maybe he can convince the management at the ministry that the communication and information part is just as important today as the medical measures.”

Another visible and popular vehicle for combatting disinformation is the Slovak police force’s Facebook page dedicated specifically to uncovering hoaxes. During the pandemic, police experts have debunked dozens of lies and manipulative posts about the virus, sharing the verified information with its 85,000 followers. Its most popular videos debunking lies about COVID-19 testing sites or the government preparing a tough lockdown were viewed by between 100,00 and 200,000 people each.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Slovakia is growing exponentially, data shows. Photo: Office of the Government of SR

Saving democracy

Over the past few years, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs has taken the lead in combatting disinformation in Slovakia, focusing on developing strategic communications with the public. This year it opened a new department to counter hybrid threats and “enforce resilience” in the system.

“We have basically provoked more government activity in this area,” said Imrich Babic, head of the strategic communications department at the Slovak Foreign Ministry. “Now, there is big hope that it becomes more systematic. It is in the legislative plans of different ministries already, so it’s on a good path.”

The Foreign Ministry, it seems, might be the one part of government where most people, including political leaders, understand the importance of having clear and unambiguous messages in communication. Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok, the former Slovak ambassador to Washington and Brussels, said in his first press conference in March that there is no doubt about Slovakia’s place in Europe and in the world: its allies are in the West, and its aim is to protect European values and unity.

“It’s a question of strategic importance, of protecting a healthy democracy,” said Marcel Pesko, the special ambassador who is heading up the hybrid threats department at the Foreign Ministry.

“Slovakia is very vulnerable in this sense,” he added, explaining that he thinks it’s due to the combination of history, political communication and the fragile democratic heritage. “Based on all of this, Slovaks are more prone to trusting disinformation.”

Experts at the ministry agree that Slovakia needs to significantly step up its fight against hybrid threats. And that means adopting the “whole of society” approach: reforming the education curriculum, pushing for more control of social networks and forming a centralised coordination mechanism within government. “The process has already started; we just need to frame it now. We would like to create the coordination mechanism by the end of the year,” Pesko told BIRN.

The proposed mechanism should create a system for dealing with hybrid threats, which includes all the ministries as well as other government offices. Its precise form, however, has yet to be decided.

In the meantime, the Foreign Ministry is organising educational programs at universities and schools; setting up workshops for Slovak diplomats and ministry employees; coordinating their policies and communication in strategic areas; and fighting disinformation online, in the media and through direct communication from political leaders.

Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok speaks at a press conference after a government meeting. Photo: Office of the Government of SR

Addressing security threats

Even before COVID-19 spread across Europe, Slovakia had been the target of propaganda campaigns by Russia and China, including various forms of hybrid warfare, according to the Slovak intelligence services.

In August, Slovakia became the 28th EU state to join the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki and the Slovak Defence Ministry has become one of the leaders of the fight against disinformation within the new government.

“The Defence Ministry wants to be active in this area,” Martina Koval Kakascikova, spokeswoman for the ministry, told BIRN. “One of the reasons is that hybrid threats will become a significant part of military operations in the future.”

In October, the ministry hired a special advisor for dealing with hybrid threats, and the communications department has taken on an even bigger role debunking disinformation and hoaxes, too.

“Moreover, the pandemic has reinforced the disinformation narratives, so the Defence Ministry has intensified its strategic communications, whether on social networks or in the field,” said Koval Kakascikova. “We also think exchanging information and experiences in the area of combatting hybrid threats and disinformation with our partners is essential.”

Although public communication from leading politicians in the previous government could be described as chaotic or conflicting at best, there is some evidence that the activities of the individual experts at the foreign and defence ministries has bolstered public support for Slovakia’s membership of NATO and the EU over the past three years. While in 2017 only 43% of Slovaks supported NATO membership, by 2019 that support had grown to 56%, according to a Globsec Trends survey. Eurobarometer, which monitors the evolution of public opinion in all EU member states, confirmed that a steady majority of Slovaks still supports the EU. Trust in liberal democracy and Slovakia’s Western allies, particularly the US, remains a challenge, however.

An additional challenge will come later this month after the Slovak government announced its intention to carry out a mass testing program across the entire country, with the aim of becoming the first country in Europe to pull off such a feat.

Disinformation experts have already warned that anti-COVID and anti-health system campaigns will definitely take off, putting an extra strain on the government’s efforts in trying to persuade people about the benefits of general testing. “In the next two weeks, so-called agitprop will take over – a fast drumming, the more absurd the better,” predicted Infosecurity.sk. “There’s nothing to lose. People are ready to listen.”

To counter this threat effectively, Marcel Pesko, the person heading up the hybrid threats department at the Foreign Ministry, admitted that, “there is still a lot of work to do in this area.”

Although all government experts agree that activists and NGOs have, until now, done a good job in fighting disinformation, they say it’s time the state picks up the baton. “The role of the state can’t be replaced by NGOs or the media,” said Pesko. “It is important to have political will to deal with these topics. And I can see that now.”

Montenegrin Broadcaster Torn by Accusations of Sabotage and Political Interference

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The management of Montenegro’s public broadcaster, RTCG, on Thursday accused members of the managing council and some editors of compromising editorial policy and working for the interests of former opposition parties that now form the new majority in parliament.

It accused the two NGO representatives on the nine-member council, Bojana Jokic and Milan Radovic, of deliberately sabotaging production and of helping the former opposition blocs to win the August 30 parliamentary elections. Jokic and Radovic represent civil society on the council.

“Internal pressure increased from party sleepers, who were ordered to sabotage the programme and compromise the editorial policy of RTCG. Council members Milan Radovic and Bojana Jokic are assisting them with the goal of the parliamentary majority taking over the public service as soon as possible,” a press release said.

The fiery response came after Jokic and Radovic on Thursday accused RTCG management of exerting unacceptable political pressure, after two editors were dismissed for disagreeing with the  broadcaster’s editorial policy.

Editor Bojan Terzic said he was quitting because of the hostile way the broadcaster covered the issue of the Serbian Orthodox Church – a hot and divisive topic in the recent elections.

RTCG management also replaced another editor, Zoran Lekovic, after he also accused it on Facebook of unprofessionalism and of religious and national intolerance.

On Thursday, Jokic and Radovic called on the management to resign. “Freedom of expression of journalists must not be endangered. Pressure on journalists has increased so we call on the management to resign, and on journalists to self-organise”, Radovic said.

The parties that form the new majority on parliament have long accused RTCG as acting as a mouthpiece for the ousted Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

A battle over the future direction of the broadcaster was therefore inevitable after three opposition blocs won a slender majority of 41 of the 81 seats in parliament on August 30, ousting the long-ruling DPS.

In its 2020 progress report on Montenegro, the European Commission expressed “serious concern” about “continued political interference” in the work of the broadcaster.

Earlier, in 2018, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders noted the replacement of several key managers at RTCG with supporters of the DPS.

The appointment of new management in March 2017 that tried to distance itself from the ruling party and produce more balanced content created hope that things would change – but civil society organisations and the opposition have since said that those initial gains were rapidly lost.

After sacking two members of the managing council, drawn from the ranks of civil society, citing alleged conflicts of interest, in March 2018 parliament appointed successors who were seen as closer to the then ruling coalition.

Governments Continue to Undermine Right to Information Under Cover of COVID-19

Posted on by BIRD

The coronavirus pandemic has had a chilling effect on people’s right to information in Central and Southeast Europe, with many countries adopting legal measures which temporarily altered or even suspended obligations regarding the public’s right to information.

Thankfully, many of these measures have since lapsed with the end of the states of emergency and lockdowns, though there are other pieces of legislation in the works that could hinder people’s right to information.

On the annual International Day for Universal Access to Information, BIRN has released data showing dramatic drops in responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests by official bodies, either in time or in their entirety. BIRN keeps track of its FOI requests and produces reports on the topic, because the information gleaned from these requests enables it to produce investigative pieces and expose wrongdoing by governments, companies and powerful individuals.

“In a world where COVID-19 has caused chaos and complexity, access to reliable and verified information is more important than ever… As these last few months have shown, public health requires transparency – whether this means statistics on the scale of the pandemic, or data on public spending. Access to accurate and trustworthy information ensures accountability for actions undertaken in response to the challenges caused by the virus, as the global community works to ‘build back better’,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, wrote on the occasion of the International Day for Universal Access to Information.

Since the beginning of the year, the data shows that BIRN journalists have sent at least 366 FOI requests to various public institutions in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. So far, just 123 requests, or 33.6 per cent, have been answered, either fully or partially, while the remainder are either rejected or still not answered.

By comparison, between January 2017 and June 2019, BIRN journalists submitted 854 official requests to access public documents in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, with slightly under half (408) approved; 224 were partially approved, meaning the institutions provided only technical information; and 221 requests were either rejected or no answer at all was received, despite repeated follow-ups from the journalists.

At the time, BIRN concluded that while FOI laws in the region are among the most liberal in Europe on paper, implementation of these laws is well below European standards – a situation that has deteriorated with the spread of the pandemic.

Public institutions that so far have been most likely to answer FOI requests are the Trade Ministry and prosecutors’ offices (Serbia), the Judicial Council (North Macedonia), the Kosovo Judicial Council and local municipalities (Kosovo).

BIRN also tests the transparency of public institutions by analysing their compliance with the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from national and subnational governments to promote open government, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. So far, four Balkan states have joined the OGP: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Some of the commitments each state proposed in their Action Plans are related to: open data, anti-corruption, public procurement, developing e-governance, adopting laws to support transparency of public institutions etc. But despite their promise to be more transparent and open, these countries are still struggling to meet the commitments.

Albania, the oldest OGP member since 2011, has been shifting the OGP leadership from one institution to another, thus failing to fully implement its own commitments: fiscal transparency, public services, access to information, public administration and anti-corruption.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, which joined OGP in 2014, has not moved a step forward in fulfilling the commitments. Independent published reports note no improvement.

Montenegro, which joined in 2012, is still facing difficulties on internal leadership to deal with OGP and track the developments of the already committed institutions.

Serbia, which joined the partnership in 2013, has the highest number of set commitments. From a total of 14, it failed to develop an IT system to support e-governance, and failed to implement proposed amendments to the laws that were supposed to improve governmental transparency.

All four countries have failed in becoming more transparent and digitally accessible. Publishing the latest updates on their websites, such as financial reports, ministry meetings minutes, or other current and important public documents, seems like too long a process to be ever fully implemented.

COVID measures

Citing the fight against COVID-19, authorities in a number of Central and Southeast European countries extended the amount of time that state bodies had to respond to FOI requests, which media watchdogs warned at the time was part of a worrying crackdown on press freedom since the onset of the pandemic.

“We are concerned that in some cases, the suspension or delay of FOI deadlines is being used to hinder media access to information and thereby shield the government from domestic scrutiny or criticism over its handling of the outbreak,” warned Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute (IPI).

Among those countries extending and suspending deadlines for FOI requests were Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, while Poland passed a law suspending the activity of courts that would rule on issues related to FOI requests.

Most of these laws have since been revoked as the states of emergency and lockdown ended, however experts are warning about other legislation in the pipeline that could have a similar detrimental effect on the right to information.

In Poland, for example, legislation has been proposed by MPs from the ruling party that would exempt officials from punishment for breaking the law if they did so as part of efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Health Organization advises that, instead of absolving of liability, it is important to, among other things, produce conditions for better public oversight of the various public decisions made during the pandemic.

“This… recommendation could be implemented by facilitating access to public information via digitising, obliging institutions to proactively publish information online, shortening dates for information access etc… Yet the current government is not making access to public information easier, but complicating it further on the pretext of battling the pandemic,” Grzegorz Makowski, an expert at the Batory Foundation’s ideaForum, wrote.

In Montenegro, the government has been criticised for pressing ahead during the pandemic with proposed amendments to the Montenegrin Law on Free Access to Information that have raised serious concern among experts, who say that the majority of the proposed changes would have a negative effect and take Montenegro further away from international transparency standards.

COVID-19 Provides New Material for Russian Anti-EU Disinformation

Posted on by BIRD

Russian disinformation in the Western Balkans and ‘Eastern Partnership’ countries has taken “a new turn” with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, portraying the European Union as overwhelmed and unable to support its neighbours, Romanian expert Nicolae Tibrigan told BIRN in an interview.

Tibrigan, a researcher at the Bucharest-based Laboratory for the Analysis of Informational Warfare and Strategic Communication, LARICS, said Russian anti-Western propaganda had fuelled conspiracy theories about the origins of the novel coronavirus and criticism of the EU’s efforts to support the countries of the Western Balkans and six former Soviet republics in the so-called Eastern Partnership.

“One of the main goals of pro-Kremlin disinformation in the two regions is to create and deepen mistrust between the EU and its partners,” Tibrigan told BIRN in an email interview.

“In the context of the health crisis, these disinformation efforts are taking a new turn, in which the EU is systematically portrayed as overwhelmed by the situation and unable to respond to the needs and calls of its eastern neighbours.”

Russia trying to undermine EU via Balkans

Giving the example of a report by Russian state-controlled agency Sputnik from January suggesting the virus originated in a NATO or US laboratory, Tibrigan said that “online sources with ‘alternative content’ and social networks propagated these narratives as indisputable facts, each time adapting the message to the internal context of each state.”

“Local actors were encouraged by the pro-Kremlin media to multiply the message to contribute to a real regional campaign of misinformation, propaganda and spread of conspiracy theories on the health crisis: secret laboratories explain coronavirus outbreaks, while outbreaks of coronavirus would automatically prove the existence of secret laboratories.”


Supporters of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wave flags and show a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin  during the ‘Future of Serbia’ campaign rally in Belgrade, Serbia, April 19, 2019. Photo: EPA/Andrej Cukic

In the Western Balkans, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic was “artificially linked to another hypothesis – that the EU would ‘turn its back’ on the Western Balkans, as it has done with other European countries.”

Tibrigan said Russia sees the Western Balkans as “a vulnerable periphery of Europe,” one which presents “an opportunity to undermine the EU and NATO by exploiting local vulnerabilities.”

Sputnik’s Serbian-language outlet, based in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is the main source of Russian disinformation in the Balkan region, Tibrigan told BIRN, while citing other outlets such as Russia Beyond the Headlines, which translates into Serbian and Macedonian, the newspaper Argumenti i Fakti [Arguments and Facts] and the ‘Ruska Rec’ newspaper supplement.

He said there was a “lack of political will” in the Western Balkans to combat Russian disinformation, while Serbia and North Macedonia have become not just consumers but “exporters” of Russian propaganda.

Tip of the iceberg

In the Eastern Partnership states – Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia – Russian propaganda is more direct, Tibrigan said and does not use one particular state as a platform as Serbia is used in the Western Balkans.


Moldovan President Igor Dodon (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) take part in the flower-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, Russia, June 24, 2020. Photo: EPA/GRIGORY SYSOEV

Disinformation has become an essential tool in trying to thwart the European path of these states, where Russian is widely spoken or understood, he said, alongside direct military intervention and the perpetuation of frozen conflicts.

“These propaganda narratives manage to penetrate the information ecosystems of the EaP [Eastern Partnership] states, with the public being ‘warned’ about the ‘lack of sustainability and stability’ of their Western partners,” said Tibrigan.

In Moldova, he said, the government and president actively disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda, while authorities have not taken any measures to limit the influence of Russian-language social networks.

Notably during the pandemic, the Moldovan Orthodox Church, canonically subordinate to the Russian Patriarchy, has echoed the main Russian propaganda themes.

The Kremlin has earmarked 1.3 billion euros for media spending in 2020 is 1.3 billion euros, compared to the shoestring budget of the EU’s anti-propaganda unit, East Stratcom, of five million euros.

Of the Russian 1.3 billion, 325 million will go to state-controlled Russia Today, which broadcasts in roughly 100 countries around the world, Tibrigan said.

“And that’s just the visible part of the iceberg, given that we can’t estimate the exact value of the propaganda operations carried out by proxies or secret service entities.”

RFE Launches in Hungary as Problems Mount at Home

Posted on by BIRD

On September 8, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) trumpeted its return to Hungary after a 27-year hiatus, marking its third re-entry into an EU member state following the 2019 resumption of services in Bulgaria and Romania. With the news media in much of Central and Southeast Europe being subsumed by governments or oligarchs, RFE/RL’s refocus on countries where media pluralism is under threat is, for those who value a free press, a welcome development.

Yet just two days after the Hungary relaunch, RFE/RL’s recently ousted President and CEO Jamie Fly was warning in testimony to Congress that the independence of RFE/RL is itself under threat from a source much closer to home.

“I would urge Congress to make the private grantees RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) even more independent of the U.S. government. The politicization of their oversight agency, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and the undermining of their corporate boards through the actions of the new CEO of the Agency will only serve to raise questions about their independence and their ability to continue to speak truth to power,” Fly said in his testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and the Environment on September 10.

The new CEO of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) – the independent body that oversees RFE/RL and the other US-funded media programs such as Voice of America (VOA) – is Michael Pack, a Donald Trump appointee, whose right-wing credentials include being a former president of the conservative Claremont Institute (Motto: Recovering the American Idea), as well as a close associate of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, with whom he has made documentary films.

Pack’s appointment to head up the USAGM was by no means straightforward. His nomination for the post was stalled in Congress for over two years as neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed particularly enthused by the candidate.

Then a White House attack on VOA in April in a statement under the headline, “Amid a pandemic, Voice of America spends your money to promote foreign propaganda”, in which it accused the outlet of uncritically relaying Chinese propaganda about its efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, seemed to galvanise Republicans and his confirmation sailed through the Senate largely along party lines on June 4.

Pack up your things and leave

The impact of Pack’s appointment was immediate. Within two weeks, VOA’s director, Amanda Bennett, and her deputy Sandy Sugawara had resigned, swiftly followed by the firing of the heads of RFE/RL and four other grantee and federal organisations under his remit, including Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

This prompted a bipartisan group of senators to write an open letter to Pack warning that the sackings, “without any consultation with Congress, let alone notification, raise serious questions about the future of the USAGM under your leadership.”

For RFE/RL insiders, both past and present, the decision by Pack to replace the bosses of the independent grantees with interim heads promoted from within the organisations is instructive, suggesting that he lacks a masterplan and is putting these organisations “on ice”, possibly until after the November 3 presidential election.

Rather, the focus of Pack so far seems to be on VOA, whose editorial mission – unlike that of the grantees, which are concerned with objective reporting within the countries where they operate – is more about communicating America’s story to a foreign audience, primarily through the coverage of US politics, policy and actions.

This is something Pack, and President Trump, clearly believe got lost during the years of the previous Obama administration. Explaining his own filmmaking to a confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2019, Pack said: “Our films tell America’s story – also one of the goals of international broadcasting. The stories we’ve told range from history to politics to culture.”

One of the first editorial changes at VOA since his appointment has been restoring the daily VOA editorials to all its services – something which had lapsed over the last few years. The editorials are crafted by USAGM officials and then cleared by the State Department.

However, insiders believe that more wide-scale changes at all the organisations are likely if Trump wins the presidential election. RFE/RL’s editorial content, like that of the other organisations, is protected from US government interference by federal law. However, few doubt that Trump, who has shown scant regard for observing democratic norms during his time in office, will find ways for his man in charge to slant the coverage in a more favourable political direction, perhaps using leverage points, such as funding or appointing heads with the same world view, that would not violate the statutory firewall.

For example, one former insider says that were Pack to apply the VOA mission of “telling America’s story and explaining its policies and ideals” to the independent grantee organisations like RFE/RL, that would represent “a significant shift in their role”, which until now has often been explaining to their audiences – more than 38 million people in 23 countries, in the case of RFE/RL – what is going on in their own societies.

Impossible job

Insiders say all this sends a terrible signal at a time when, according to the US-based democracy monitor Freedom House’s latest Nations In Transit report, a growing number of leaders in Europe and Eurasia have dropped even the pretence of playing by the rules of democracy, while openly attacking democratic institutions and the press.

The most worrying situation is in Hungary, where RFE/RL’s new Szabad Európa service on various digital platforms intends, in its own words, to “provide objective, fact-based reporting in a country that has witnessed a decline in diverse media voices.”

Since the Fidesz government of Viktor Orban came to power in 2010, it has set about emasculating, co-opting, buying up or killing off critical media outlets. In August, the whole editorial team of Hungary’s most-read news site, Index, resigned in protest citing threats to their editorial independence. And in the same week of RFE/RL’s launch, the last remaining critical radio, Klubradio, was informed that its licence would not be automatically extended.

Even before Szabad Európa’s launch, there were indications that RFE/RL’s “signature commitment to serving the public interest by reporting on the issues that matter most to our audiences” would be difficult to maintain in Hungary.

The Hungarian service was launched almost a year after that of the Romanian and Bulgarian editions, with Congress – which allocates almost 800 million dollars to USAGM each year – only finally approving the funding for it last September.

In an interview with BIRN, the director of RFE/RL in Hungary, Gyula Csak, refused to comment on any decisions taken in the US, but there was clearly some behind-the-scenes wrangling over the Hungarian RFE/RL project. In September, just days before Congress approved the funding, a group of US Senators (all Democrats) sent a letter to the US Ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, warning him not to interfere with the project.

“We applaud the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s (USAGM) decision to return independent news broadcasts to Hungary via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is for this reason that we are so deeply troubled by media reports that you sought to gain assurances from the agency that it would avoid negative stories or investigative journalism regarding Hungary,” the letter read.

Eyebrows were also raised when, back in September, Jamie Fly met with Hungarian officials and tweeted about having had “good meetings” with government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, who regularly labels any criticism of Hungary as fake news.

Further fuelling suspicions about the US Embassy’s ambivalence over declining democratic standards in Hungary under the government of Prime Minister Orban – who Trump once praised for doing a “tremendous job” – was its decision just before the 2018 parliamentary elections to abruptly cancel a 700,000 dollar State Department grant to support objective reporting in Hungary.

“We were very disappointed by the Embassy,” Miklos Hargitai, President of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists (MUOSz), told BIRN. “Previously, there was a lot of coordination with [the Embassy], identifying where independent media would need most help. A lot of journalists and regional media outlets were already working on their applications when the whole project was just dropped. Nobody ever talked about it.”

To many, this was a signal that US priorities towards Hungary, previously stressing media freedom and democratic norms, had changed since Trump took office – a perception that seemed to be borne out by the arrival in Budapest of Ambassador Cornstein in 2018 with a brief to mend ailing US relations with the Fidesz government.

Cornstein appears to have succeeded in his brief. He is known to enjoy excellent personal relations with Orban and other members of his cabinet, so much so that he made international headlines when he boasted to the New York Times about stripping down to his underwear and relaxing on Orban’s plane after a visit to the White House in 2019.

Cornstein conceded in an interview with news site 24.hu that when he learnt about the return of RFE/RL to Hungary, he wanted to ensure that the government’s side would be given a hearing. “I would like Radio Free Europe to be about important American values. Of course, they also have the right to be critical. All I ask is that if they write something critical, they give the Hungarian government the opportunity to react. And if they write about the government doing anything good, give the opposition a chance to speak as well. That’s all I have asked from the head of the organisation. This way I can fully support the project, but if they don’t, I’ll be grouchy.” Cornstein said.

The head of RFE/RL in Hungary is convinced that his outlet’s journalistic independence will not be jeopardised, even after what has been dubbed the “Wednesday night massacre”, when the heads of the grantee organisations were fired, including his boss Jamie Fly.

“There is a legal firewall, a legal guarantee which protects us from any interference either from politics or from the management. Trust me, we all know what journalistic independence means and how valuable it is,” said Csak, who has previously worked for the BBC and various Hungarian news outlets, including public radio. “After all, many of our colleagues at RFE come from countries where they are no longer able to work as journalists.”

In words that will no doubt go some way to mollifying the US embassy in Budapest, Csak stressed to BIRN that, “public service also means unbiased reporting. We will give all sides the chance to express their opinion.”

Ambassador Cornstein won’t be around to hold Csak to that promise, having announced he will be leaving his post on November 1. Even so, Csak’s team of roughly ten journalists will have their work cut out trying to re-establish balanced public service reporting in a country where the pro- and anti-government media inhabit parallel universes and Orban’s Fidesz party grows increasingly intolerant of critical voices.

Without strong backing at home, RFE/RL might find it has an impossible job on its hands in Hungary.

Rights Groups Urge Albania to ‘Rethink’ Disputed Media Law

Posted on by BIRD

Seven international rights organisations sent an open letter to the Albanian parliament on Wednesday, voicing concern over reports that the ruling Socialist Party is pressing on with legislation targeting the online media, despite fierce international criticism from the Venice Commission, among others.

The seven groups, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, Article 19, the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, Free Press Unlimited, FPU, the International Press Institute, IPI, Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso Transeuropa, OBCT, and the South East Europe Media Organisation, SEEMO, urged the parliament to drop the current proposals and restart the whole process.

“We are writing to express our grave concern about the apparent plans of the Parliament of Albania to ignore the issues raised in Venice Commission Opinion No. 980/2020 of 19 June 2020, further threatening press freedom and the right to freedom of expression and to information in Albania,” the letter published on the ECPMF website, reads.

“We urge you to rethink the current legislative procedure and instead put in place a transparent process that leads to appropriate legislation that addresses all the Venice Commission’s recommendations, and to include civil society and representatives of the media throughout this process,” the letter adds.

Their letter follows a statement by local media organisations, including BIRN Albania, published last week. In that statement, the signatory organisations observed that the parliament aims to use article 86 of the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly, which says parliament should only reconsider issues introduced by the President of the Republic, to get the disputed law through. The organisations said they fear any changes conducted in this way would only be cosmetic, and would fail to address grave concerns expressed over the law.

The legislation, first proposed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama as an “anti-defamation package”, aims to create an administrative body that will be empowered to order media to take down news reports over issues such as “infringing the dignity of individuals”, under the threat of heavy fines. Critics say the law could have a chilling effect on media freedom due to its broad terms.

Following parliamentary approval of the new law amid protests last December, it was blocked by President Ilir Meta, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE, asked the Venice Commission for its opinion.

The Venice Commission criticised the law in entirety and, among other things, warned that it could be used by powerful people to protect themselves from media criticism.

Unbowed by the criticism, Prime Minister Rama called again this month for speedy approval of the law, claiming defamation on online media had reached an unacceptably high level.

Hungary’s Last Independent Radio Station at Risk

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Hungary’s Media Council decided on Friday not to automatically extend the licence of the government-critical Klubradio – the last remaining opposition radio station is Hungary, which only functions offline in the metropolitan area of Budapest.

Klubradio is one of a declining number of outlets that are critical of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government, which since coming to power in 2010 has set about co-opting or killing off critical media outlets, shrewdly concealing most as neutral business decisions. This led to a number of press freedom, freedom of expression and journalistic organisations earlier this month urging the European Commission to act on several complaints that the Hungarian government has violated EU state aid rules as a means to undermine media pluralism.

The government-appointed Media Council argued that Klubradio had repeatedly violated the country’s media law, therefore its licence – due to expire on February 14, 2021– cannot be automatically extended. If Klubradio wishes to continue its service, the Media Council said it would have to apply for a new licence. Should its application for a new licence fail, Klubradio’s only option would be to broadcast online.

The Media Council did not specify exactly what they meant by violating the media law. Previously, the CEO of Klubradio, Richard Stock, denied to the Media1 news site that his station had committed any violation which could lead to the termination of its licence.

As Media1 reported, this is not the first time that Klubradio’s situation has been precarious. The Media Council has been trying to undermine the radio’s operations for years now, but Klubradio repeatedly went to court and won against the media authority. In a statement, Klubradio said it intends to continue using legal measures to stay on the air.

“The leaders and employees of Klubradio are looking for legal and other means in order to ensure that Hungary’s last independent radio, which authentically informs hundreds of thousands of people every day, is not silenced,” it said in the statement.

From the government’s side, there seems to be a conscious strategy to neuter the radio segment of the media. The Media Council decided to turn off DAB+ digital radio broadcasting in Hungary just last week, arguing that in the last 12 years there has been no real demand for this service. Gabor Polyak, from Mertek Media Monitoring, said in a recent interview that the government wants to keep a tight grip on the radio market. If digital broadcasting were still an option, the Media Council could not keep a monopoly on frequency licences.

Jansa is Eroding Press Freedom in Slovenia, IPI Warns

Posted on by BIRD

Slovenia is among the few countries in Europe that have experienced a swift downturn in press and media freedom, according to the latest report of the International Press Institute, IPI, a global network of journalists, editors and media executives defending press freedom.

Jamie Wiseman, Advocacy Officer at IPI, stated in the in-depth report published on Tuesday that the Slovenian government led by Janez Jansa was contributing to an increasingly hostile environment for journalists.

The IPI report noted that, according to some observers, Jansa has launched “vitriolic attacks on reporters on Twitter, enabling a wider increase in digital harassment from online trolls and contributing to an increasingly hostile climate for watchdog journalism”.

Jansa, an ally of authoritarian 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 coronavirus. He replaced Marjan Sarec, whose centre-left coalition fell in January.

The change of power coincided with what the IPI said is an unprecedented wave of insults and online smear campaigns against journalists in Slovenia.

Jansa 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 the investigative journalist Blaz Zgaga.

As IPI recalled, in mid-March, a government account retweeted a claim that Zgaga was an “escaped psychiatric patient”. Shortly after that, the reporter began receiving numerous online death threats and smears, drawing condemnation from international organisations.

Observers and journalists told IPI that “animosity from officials has enabled increasing harassment of journalists online”, from which neither foreign journalists nor public television journalists were spared.

Despite reasons for worry, Wiseman wrote that “concerns that Slovenia will become another illiberal democracy akin to Hungary are, for now, premature”.

”Nonetheless the exporting of Hungarian methods to Slovenia and other states in Central and South-Eastern European countries should worry EU leaders,” he continued, urging the EU and other organisations to follow developments in Slovenia closely and react strongly if need be.

“In the coming weeks, all eyes will be focused on the end of the public consultation into the legislative amendments to the public broadcaster and press agency,” the report noted, referring to plans by Slovenia’s government to amend public service media legislation, which some experts see as an attempt to rein in state media.

On the other hand, the Slovenian Culture Ministry told BIRN in July that nothing in the set of laws indicates that public media will be put under direct state influence. “The laws are not changing corporate or programming governance of RTV Slovenia, nor do they have provisions to do that,” it pointed out.

On August 25, the government responded to an alert on the Council of Europe’s platform, which monitors press freedom, issued in May, attaching Jansa’s own essay, “War with the media”, and offered additional explanations, insisting that “freedom of expression is a right that belongs to every individual”.

“Negative criticism of an individual journalist, publisher or broadcaster by the prime minister, does not automatically render it an attack or an encroachment on media independence,“ the letter said.

“Finally the World Press Freedom Index, published annually by international non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, ranks Slovenia 32nd, which is two places better than in 2019 and the same as in 2018,” the government observed.

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