Organized training on creating and implementing video campaigns

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18/10/2021

BUDVA, 16.10.2021 – Director and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Cetinje, Nikola Vukcevic, led the training on creating and implementing video campaigns for the needs of journalistic organizations in the region.

Participants were representatives of regional partner organizations, members of the Safe Journalists network: the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, the “BH Journalists” Association, the Croatian Journalists’ Association, the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, and the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro.

During the two-day training, Vukcevic introduced the participants to different types of approaches to making video campaigns, ways of making scripts and analyzed in detail the already placed commercials on the market. He presented to the participants the process of making a video campaign, as well as the financial construction needed for the realization of a certain idea.

He stressed the importance of making a brief by the client, which served to develop the ideas of the participants. As a result of the training, a campaign aimed at media workers will be created in the coming period.

AJK condemns an attack against RFE/RL team

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AJK

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13/10/2021

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A team of journalists from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was among those attacked by local protesters in north of Kosovo.

AJK is alarmed that a group of 50 people surrounded the vehicle in which the team was traveling, and demanded them to stop filming. In trying to take the camera away, they damaged it and the taxi as well. Fortunately, the team members managed to escape unhurt.

AJK once again asks all relevant authorities to ensure a safe environment for journalists reporting from the north of the country.

Tamara Filipovic: Media are discriminated against in access to public advertising

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IJAS

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13/10/2021

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Amid growing state media capture and decreased journalistic freedom in the Western Balkans, a former chief of the BBC World Service said on Tuesday (12 October) he regrets the closure of the world’s largest international broadcaster in the region.

Speaking at a hybrid conference in the Brussels Press Club, organised by the Balkan Free Media Initiative, Peter Horrocks, who is now a board member of Ofcom, said with self-irony:

“I have probably closed down more journalism in Eastern Europe than the most ambitious authoritarian. I was responsible for closing a number of services, including Bulgaria and Romania, Albania”.

He said this was a “bittersweet decision”.

In 2011 the BBC closed its service in the Balkans after earlier closures of the Croatian, Bulgarian, and Slovenian language services.

In hindsight, this decision appears controversial, if not mistaken.

“And I ask myself now what has gone wrong,” Horrocks told the conference. The deteriorating media situation in the Balkans was the conference’s theme, with BFMI unveiling its first report, focusing on the media situation in Bulgaria, Serbia, and North Macedonia.

Antoinette Nikolova, a Bulgarian journalist and the founder and director of BFMI, explained why these three countries were chosen.

Bulgaria is the lowest-ranking EU country on World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. Serbia is conducting EU accession talks with the entire state machine working for President Alexander Vucic, Nikolova said. She added that North Macedonia, which aspires to start EU membership negotiations but faces a Bulgarian veto, also suffers from state media capture.

In the three countries, Nikolova said, the same techniques were identified: controlling the public and private media via funding, sometimes including EU money, making sure the regulators are weak and dependant on government-disbursed funding, and preserving opacity of media ownership.

No real media market in Serbia

According to Tamara Filipovic from the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia (NUNS), the biggest problem with Serbian media is the absence of a real media market due to significant state interference.

“Media are discriminated against in access to public advertising. The institutions and the public enterprises do not want to declare how much they pay for advertising in the media,” Filipovic said.

She mentioned the 2014 adoption of new media laws concerning the privatisation of some 80 media that were state-controlled and owned. State-owned media was bought by proxies close to the ruling SNS party and were later compensated with public money through advertising, Filipovic said.

She added that the law was misused even though it was adopted after consulting the EU and getting the green light from Brussels.

Filipovic also talked about the fragmented media market in Serbia, where there are 2,600 media outlets but only a handful of independent media. Serbs usually get their information from the television, and most of the TV channels are paying lip service to Vucic, she added.

No ideological restrains in North Macedonia

Naser Selmani, former president of the Association of Journalists in North Macedonia (AJM), describes how media owners close to the establishment became millionaires overnight.

His example concerned Sitel TV, the most prominent national TV channel. It was established by a politician and businessman who was the leader of the socialist party and a close friend of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.

“They have no ideological restraints. They serve as propaganda machines of the government. All the time they are with those in power,” Selmani added.

He said there was little difference between the former nationalist government of Nikola Gruevski and the present cabinet of Zoran Zaev.

Selmani added that during his 11 years in power, Gruevski spent €30 million on media, while the present government has disbursed €8 million in three years. It’s impossible, he said, to receive information about what exactly the money was spent on.

Selmani added that the government’s aim was not to help the media become more professional but to control editorial policy and prevent criticism.

The worsening situation in Bulgaria

Radan Kanev, a Bulgarian MEP from Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, offered a grim description of the media situation in his country. His party is affiliated with the European People’s Party but critical of fellow EPP member GERB, the party of former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov,

Kanev said we should question why media freedom deteriorated after EU accession and continues to do so. He did not believe that the end of Borissov’s 11-year rule in Bulgaria would necessarily end media censorship.

“Once we have a stable government again, many things will become the same,” he said. Bulgarians will vote for the third time this year to elect a parliament on 14 November.

The MEP argued that the EU needs to stop letting governments decide which media get the EU funding for advertising the EU’s programmes, policies and tenders. He stressed that the Commission should allocate those funds.

Albania which was not covered in the event, but that has also lost a BBC outpost, ranks at 84 on the World Press Freedom Index. Issues over ownership plurality, censorship, and pressure from the government, have caused it to fall eight places since 2018.

The shade of Berlusconi

Peter Whitehead from the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) said the malpractices described are not limited to the examined countries, which are merely “great examples” of what is happening elsewhere in the EU and the accession countries.

“We have seen many examples of regulators being controlled by the state, public broadcasters being captured by the state, soft censorship – allegation of state funding and EU funding to media that are friendly towards the authorities and taken away from independent ones”, he said.

Andrea Bonnani, an editorialist at La Repubblica and a correspondent for Italian media in Brussels for 30 years, told the audience about the damage for the media from Silvio Berlusconi’s era, which has also contaminated the media landscape in other countries.

Today, he argued, the Berlusconi media model, which nurtures a vulgar subculture, is used by populists in Italy and other countries.

Many media in the Balkan countries have been widely inspired by the Berlusconi model, which among other things, transformed information into infotainment, replacing serious journalism with a tabloid version that relies on click baits and even fake news.

Attacks continue against Kosovo journalists in north

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AJK

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13/10/2021

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The Association of Journalists of Kosovo – AJK, is alarmed that journalists reporting from north of Kosovo are still in risk for doing their job.

Our colleagues are being attacked continuously by local protesters, who are throwing different explosive devices towards them.

Once again, we call on relevant authorities to ensure a safe environment for journalists while on duty.

The first verdict for publishing the names of people in self-isolation

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TUMM

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13/10/2021

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PODGORICA, 13.10.2021 – The state of Montenegro will have to pay 500 euros with interest to J.L. from Podgorica, because her name, among others, was publicly announced on the list of people who were placed in self-isolation, at the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic.

This is the first instance verdict of the judge of the Basic Court in Podgorica, Dijana Radulovic.

Due to the fact that some citizens violated self-isolation, on March 21 last year, the Government of Montenegro published a list of all those in self-isolation, including the majority who respected that measure. The lists contained the name and surname of the person in self-isolation, as well as the residential address.
The then Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said that he understood the reasons for the criticism, but also claimed that the health of citizens was more important than human rights.

“The claim is partially accepted, so the defendant (State of Montenegro) is obliged to pay the plaintiff, based on compensation for non-pecuniary damage due to violation of personal rights – the right to protection of private life, caused by publishing data on self-isolation, the total amount of 500 euros, with statutory default interest, beginning
from 30.09.2021, as the day of judgment until the final payment”, it is stated in the judgment of the Basic Court.

By the same decision, the state is obliged to pay the costs of the litigation in the amount of 272.25 euros.

If this verdict is confirmed, the state, ie the citizens, will pay dearly for the controversial decision of the National Coordination Body from March 2020 on publishing the list of persons in self-isolation. The Constitutional Court stated in June that the decision was not in accordance with the highest legal act, after which numerous lawsuits were initiated due to the violation of the right to privacy.

The media previously published data from the competent services – that from March 15th to April 24th, 2020, 8,221 decisions on self-isolation and 1,795 decisions on placing persons in quarantine were issued. That is a total of 10,016 people.

The legal representative of J. L., lawyer Dalibor Kavaric, said that all other cases on the same grounds were suspended until the verdict on J. L.’s lawsuit became final.
“We are waiting for the finality of this case, and then this verdict will be case law
in other cases and a benchmark for future cases. There can be deviations if someone is a public figure”, said Kavaric.

Albanian and Serbian journalists are attacked in Northern Mitrovica

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AJK

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13/10/2021

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The Association of Journalists of Kosovo – AJK, expresses its concern about the difficult and unsafe working conditions for journalists today in the northern municipalities of Kosovo.

According to the reports, several journalists of different Albanian media were attacked in the “Bosniak Quarter” in Northern Mitrovica and another incident occurred on the road that leads to Leposavic where protesters chased cars with journalists.

Meanwhile, there were attacks and pressures on journalists of local news portal “Kossev”, by protesters. As a result, the news website has withdrawn its teams reportimg from the field.

AJK calls upon Kosovo Police to provide a safe envoirment for journalists in order for them to carry out their work in an unhindered manner.

The erosion of media freedom in the Balkans has gone too far

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IJAS

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12/10/2021

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The EU is supposed to embody the values of liberty, democracy and fundamental human rights. But when it comes to media freedom, it is a passive observer in the face of widespread abuses on its own turf and in its immediate neighbourhood, writes Antoinette Nikolova.

Antoinette Nikolova is the founder and Director of the Balkan Free Media Initiative established in April 2021.

Methodical attacks on independent media are becoming endemic across Eastern Europe, and especially in the Balkans.

EU member states such as Bulgaria are nestled among authoritarian states from the developing world in this year’s Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 World Press Freedom Index, in which Bulgaria ranked a shocking 112th out of 180 countries surveyed.

Other Balkan states eying accession to the EU, such as Serbia and North Macedonia, are characterised with domestic media markets where independent critical voices are forced to the fringes of public discourse.

Unfortunately, the EU appears to lack both the will and the tools to improve the situation.

This issue cannot be neglected any longer, especially since attacks on media in the Balkans are increasingly sophisticated and far-reaching.

A robust, independent media market relies on a complex interplay between many state and non-state actors. Lawmakers, media owners, suppliers, distributors, advertisers, regulators and outside observers all have a part to play.

However, while cases of attacks on journalists are well documented by several organisations, there is not enough attention paid to the insidious practices used by politicians and their allies to control the wider media environment.

The Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI) was created to help address this problem and to shed light on the shadowy commercial techniques strangling free media in the Balkan region.

This is the subject of the first BFMI report, which looks at media censorship in Bulgaria, Serbia and North Macedonia.

As the report notes, the main tools for manipulating the media markets identified include, but are not limited to:

Control of public broadcasters and regulatory authorities tasked with upholding media laws
Abuse of weak regulation on transparency of ownership to enable unlawful control of media outlets by governments or their proxies
Use of government subsidies to foster clientelism in weak, over-saturated media markets

As the EU prepares its much-advertised Media Freedom Act, BFMI calls on the European institutions to give these issues the attention they deserve.

Sadly, control of the media influences politics not just in authoritarian states but in democratic countries too. Silvio Berlusconi would hardly have been Italy’s three-time prime minister without his media empire. The influence of Rupert Murdoch in the UK and, later, in the rise of Trump, is similarly well documented.

However, in the cases listed above there were at least some checks and balances. When Berlusconi became actively involved in the political scene in Italy, for example, he had to give up ownership of his media assets.

But in less advanced democracies in the Balkans, where there are inadequate mechanisms to prevent the emergence of abusive systems, political control of the media risks incapacitating the democratic process.

In Bulgaria, it is legal for politicians to own media outlets and some political parties have their own television channels.

In Serbia, the country’s state-owned cable operator, Telekom Srbija, has entered lucrative partnerships with allies of President Aleksandar Vučić, who have gone on to purchase media outlets, which have in some cases become noticeably more pro-government in their reporting. In North Macedonia, prominent politicians can circumvent regulation by installing immediate family members as owners of their media assets.

Across the three states, the regulatory bodies designed to uphold the law and prevent abuse of the market are underfunded, while rules for appointing senior management leave them further vulnerable to political interference.

At the same time, saturated media markets mean large numbers of outlets compete for dwindling advertising revenues, leaving media outlets open to clientelism from state contracts as well as private investors. In the case of Bulgaria, non-transparent distribution of funds from the EU itself remains a serious issue.

In North Macedonia, the incoming SDSM government elected in 2017 pledged to stop government funding of the media or advertising apart from projects in the public interest of the former. The government’s pledge and other widespread media reforms remain unfulfilled.

Such broken promises are all too common. Leaders in the Balkans, most recently Serbia’s President Vučić, present themselves as reformists and enjoy photo opportunities with senior EU leaders. Meanwhile, at home, media freedoms are systematically being eroded.

The EU cannot allow this pretence to continue. It needs to use its leverage to hold these countries to account. The longer these anti-democratic tendencies are allowed to continue, the harder it will be to undo the damage they have caused.

AJK alarmed after threats against Gazeta Sinjali journalists

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AJK

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11/10/2021

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Association of Journalists of Kosovo is alarmed over the threats towards our colleagues of Gazeta Sinjali.

Journalists of the news website have been threatened by killing and insulted by relatives of the people who were arrested yesterday by Kosovo Police suspected over plots to carry a terrorist attack in Kosovo.

AJK finds it extremely disturbing and completely unacceptable that journalists continue to be target of such threats. Therefore, we call upon the competent authorities to protect the journalists and this online news media in order to prevent any eventual incident.

We believe that such threats seriously endanger freedom of expression and the climate of doing journalism. We also call on our colleagues to report such cases of threats to Kosovo Police.

The Chairman of the Board of AJK, Xhemajl Rexha Participates in the Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Journalists – EFJ

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AJK

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08/10/2021

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Association of Journalists of Kosovo – AJK, at the annual meeting of the European Federation of Journalists – EFJ, which is being held in Zagreb, Croatia, was represented by the Chairman of the Board, Xhemajl Rexha.

Rexha was a panel member on “Journalists under pressure in the Western Balkans”, where he presented the latest Safety Index about the journalists in Kosovo, which was conducted by AJK in compliance with the regional platform Safe Journalists.

He also presented in general the situation of media freedom in Kosovo, the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the work and well-being of Kosovar journalists, as well as the need for monitoring and transparency on the important process of electing the new Board of Public Broadcaster – RTK, and the election of the new IMC members.

Safejournalists.net

No real media market in Serbia

No ideological restrains in North Macedonia

The worsening situation in Bulgaria

The shade of Berlusconi