PRISTINA, 19.12.2018 – In the annual conference, the Association of Journalists of Kosovo published its 2018 report on “Indicators on the level of media freedom and journalists’ safety”.
The report presents the findings about the legislation and challenges in practice, the journalists’ position in newsrooms and journalists’ safety.
The 2018 report stresses that in general Kosovo provides main safeguards for protection of media and freedom of expression but their implementation remains weak. During this year, the legislative body has worked on five draft-laws, some of them have already passed, and some are still in the process. The draft-law on public broadcaster is expected to be approved soon which would allow RTK to have sustainable financing mechanism.
The interviewed journalists for the report stated that journalists’ continue to be in weak economic position, including lack of working contracts, low salaries and in some cases there were violations of labour law by the employers. Report stresses that Kosovo is the only country in the region that lacks a trade union that would represent the interests of all journalists and other media professionals.
During 2018, AJK registered 16 cases including two physical attacks, a property damage and 13 cases of death threats and verbal threats against journalists. During this year, police issued a criminal report against an individual and an indictment also was issued against one individual. Both have threatened journalists.
The methodology of the research included qualitative interviews with 7 journalists, qualitative document analysis such as research studies and analyses produced by other research organizations, academia, NGOs, individual researches, as well as official statistical data requested from public institutions or collected from available websites or from other published sources.
Panellists of conference were Jan Braathu, chief of OSCE mission to Kosovo, Aferdita Bytyci, president of the Basic Court in Pristina and Riza Shillova, director of investigation department from Kosovo police.
Jan Braathu stressed that the report has tackled some of the main issues not related only to journalists but to everyone interested about media freedom. He mentioned also the cases of attacks against journalists that were registered during this year.
“16 cases of different attacks against journalists that happened during 2018, it’s not a big number but it is of concern, therefore a better working environment should be created for journalists. This can be achieved y ensuring better cooperation with institutions of justice and security,” said Braathu.
Aferdita Bytyci said that the Basic Court in Pristina will continue to have the cooperation with all media, including an immediate action to those that obstruct the work of journalist.
Riza Shillova said that Kosovo police is making efforts to deepen the cooperation with media as they should stand as partners.
Author of report, Petrit Collaku stated that justice and security institutions have move forward by creating their own mechanism of protection for journalists but the chain of the three institutions, police, prosecution and courts should function continuously. He stated that AJK will continue to further deepen the cooperation with institutions of justice and security.
This is the third and last report within the three year regional project “Western Balkans Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety”, financed by European Commission.