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Journalist Ulpiana Emra attacked during super cup final between Trepça and Peja

By
AJK
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Association of Journalists of Kosovo is deeply concerned about the news of an attack on journalist Ulpiana Emra from ArtMotion during the Super Cup final basketball match between Trepça and Peja.

Emra was attacked by fans while reporting on the final of the basketball Super Cup between Trepca and Peja.

It has been reported that the journalist was assaulted by fans in the stands, who threw bottles at her, resulting in injuries to her body.

The AJK firmly condemns this assault on our colleague Emra and calls on the Kosovo Police to immediately find the perpetrator(s) of the crime, bring them to justice, and hold them accountable for their acts.

IPI website under powerful DDoS attack

By
IJAS
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0

Dear IPI members, friends, and supporters,

You may have noticed that IPI’s website has been largely inaccessible over the past few days.

This is because IPI has been battling a major distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack since September 6. This is the most significant attack on IPI’s online infrastructure in our organization’s history.

A DDoS attack is an attempt to flood a website with hundreds of thousands of false “visits” to overload and collapse the server that is hosting the page.

This attack began days after IPI published a report about an unprecedented wave of DDoS attacks against more than 40 independent news outlets in Hungary over the last five months.

The first attack against IPI recorded in our logs took place just two days after the publication of the report, on September 1. Since then, overload attempts have increased in magnitude as countermeasures were put in place to mitigate the attacks.

The current wave of DDoS attacks against IPI’s servers appears to be highly coordinated and targeted. We do not know the source of these attacks but we are currently investigating.

Our IT team is currently working to mitigate the attack and keep our website online.

We will continue to keep our community updated on these attacks and the measures we’re taking to restore our site.

DDoS attacks are increasingly being employed as a weapon against the free press. Rest assured that this effort to disrupt our work only strengthens our resolve to fight for press freedom and independent journalism wherever they are threatened.

Thank you for your support of IPI’s important work.

AJK expresses its disappointment regarding gender discrimination in managment positions at RTK

By
AJK
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0

The Board of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo has been informed about the recent internal vacancy for managerial positions at RTK.

AJK expresses disappointment with the apparent gender discrimination practiced against long-time journalists Ilire Zajmi and Flora Masurica Durmishi, as well as lawyer Mihrije Beiqi. Despite being the top scorers in the open competitions, they were not elected to the respective positions.~

The AJK considers this a failure by the institution’s Board to promote gender equality in RTK, despite its composition being gender equal.

RTK should encourage women to apply for managerial roles and give them a voice in decision-making, acknowledging the outstanding contribution they have made over the years to the development of public broadcasting.

Hrkalovic accuses reporter of calling for lynch

By
IJAS
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Foto: N1

A former senior Internal Affairs Ministry (MUP) official demanded a continuance in her law suit against an investigative news portal on Thursday claiming pressure on the court by reporters.

Dijana Hrkalovic, a former MUP State Secretary, and her lawyer asked for a continuance in the law suit hearing she brought against the KRIK investigative news portal. “A reporter present here called for the lynching of certain people in front of the Special Court yesterday and that is what they want to do now…. I am asking for a continuance… The plaintiffs are proving the claims I made and I won’t be part of their performance…. This is not a SLAPP suit but a law suit for the constant demonization of myself for years,” Hrkalovic said.

He lawyer Nemanja Srzentc said that the reporter who called for a lynch a day earlier to intimidate Hrkalovi and the court. “The news desk could have sent someone else,” he said.

KRIK lawyer Kruna Savovic said that this is a classic SLAPP suit. “They want to exclude the public… She knew this would be reported when she filed suit and I don’t know why she’s surprised,” she said.

The demand for a continuance was denied by the judge.

Coalition for Media Freedom: Latest Proposed Amendments to Law on Public Information and Media Unacceptable

By
IJAS
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The latest version of the Draft Law on Public Information and Media, with which, as journalists and media associations were told, the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications will present for public discussion, contains solutions that are unacceptable to the Coalition. This version of the Draft Law will not contribute to the improvement of the media scene and citizens’ information and are in conflict with the Media Strategy.

The decision according to which data on whether they violated the Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics will be sought only for print and online media that have accepted the jurisdiction of the Press Council is unacceptable, discriminatory and leads to the legalization of rewarding media that continuously violate professional standards. This practically means that the media that did not accept the authority of the self-regulatory body will be able to violate the Code of Journalists with impunity and receive money from citizens for that.

The state is now proposing to punish media that are in the system of self-regulation and have committed to comply with the Code, completely contrary to the idea with which this provision was proposed, which is that the state should stop funding media that systematically violate ethical standards, promote violence, use hate speech and they run campaigns against political dissidents.

The Coalition for Media Freedom warns that this proposal is disastrous for the Serbian media scene, informing citizens in accordance with the public interest, as well as for the responsible spending of money from the budget.

The Government of Serbia, with the proposed essential changes at the last moment, after the Working Group had already agreed on the text of the Draft Law, shows that it has no intention to regulate media opportunities in Serbia with this law, but rather to reward unprofessionalism, unethicality and non-agreement.

The drafts of two media laws (the Law on Public Information and the Media and the Law on Electronic Media), which will be discussed in public, contain other, similar inappropriate solutions, contrary to the Government’s Media Strategy, which have completely rendered meaningless the previous work on drafting the law and strategic determination of Serbia.

The Coalition for Media Freedom consists of the Association of Media, the Association of Online Media (AOM), the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina (NDNV), the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), the Business Association of Local and Independent Media “Local Press” and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation.

Open letter from CJA to the President of the Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency, Ante Žigman.

By
CJA
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Nikola Šolić, HND

Dear President of the Administrative Council, Mr. Žigman,

I am writing to you on behalf of the Croatian Journalists’ Association (CJA) with an open letter in response to your arbitrary decision to exclude journalist Valentina Wiesner, who has been covering the finance sector for years, from an event where she intended to question its purpose and goals.

Specifically, this concerns the conference “Consumer Protection in Insurance and Pension Savings – EU Strategy and Croatian Practice,” held on August 28, 2023, at the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb. Journalists were not allowed to publicly ask questions to the participants as part of the official program. Prior to this, as alerted by colleague Wiesner, who is also the President of the Supervisory Board of the Croatian Journalists’ Association, she was the only journalist removed from the list of sectoral journalists to whom you sent a repeated invitation prior to the conference.

In this manner, as a public institution regulating the financial sector, you grossly violated the constitutionally guaranteed right of journalists to freely report, thereby censoring the public’s right to open discussion about why representatives of consumers were not represented at a conference on consumer protection, an undoubtedly matter of public interest.

Additionally, we emphasize that the conference was funded with public money, given that HANFA is funded by management fees charged by entities under its supervision. Furthermore, according to colleague Wiesner, journalist Danko Družijanić, whom you engaged to lead the conference and who is an employee of the Croatian Radiotelevision, during the conference – by prohibiting the asking of journalistic questions – stated that he was acting as a representative of the organizer.

As our colleague warned us, the event was recorded. There are witnesses to these events, and we remind you that, according to Article 27 of the Media Law, paragraph 1, journalists have the right to express opinions on all events, phenomena, persons, objects, and activities. Article 38 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of thought and expression and prohibits censorship. Journalists have the right to freedom of reporting and access to information. The right to access information held by public authorities is guaranteed, restrictions on the right to access information must be proportionate to the nature of the need for restriction in each individual case, and necessary in a free and democratic society, and prescribed by law. Furthermore, Article 127 of the Criminal Code, paragraph 1, states: Whoever denies or restricts freedom of speech or public appearance, freedom of the press or other means of communication, or the free establishment of public communication institutions shall be punished by imprisonment for up to one year. Paragraph 2 states: Whoever orders or implements censorship or unlawfully denies or restricts a journalist’s freedom of reporting shall be punished by the penalty prescribed in paragraph 1 of this article.

It is unacceptable for a public institution, the regulator of financial institutions, to arbitrarily exclude a journalist who follows them sectorally from an event she questions, and we cannot characterize this in any other way than an attempt at censorship.

Sincerely,

Hrvoje Zovko

President of CJA

Threats towards RTV Besa’s staff in Prizren

By
AJK
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0

Yesterday, the staff of RTV Besa in the Municipality of Prizren reported being threatened by Lulzim Kabashi, the former chairman of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo in this municipality.

In an email directed to the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, the editors of this media have stated that “Lulzim Kabashi, the former president of AAK in Prizren, “raided” RTV Besa’s offices yesterday afternoon, threatening them. He threatened the staff with their life in response to media coverage of a former AAK candidate in the last local elections who was arrested yesterday on suspicion of possessing narcotics. The case has been reported to the Kosovo Police.”

The Association of Journalists of Kosovo condemns the threats and intimidation against the colleagues of the local medium, RTV Besa, at the same time calls on the Kosovo Police to treat the case with priority so that the colleagues can continue to perform their profession without hindrance.

European Media Freedom Act: the end of source confidentiality?

By
IJAS
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0
Photo: Pixabay.com

The new European regulation aims to protect the secrecy of journalistic sources, the key concept at the heart of journalism, but actually risks legitimising its systematic violation

Dimitri Bettoni

The original draft

Published last September by the European Commission, the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) is a huge, ambitious project to ensure that the media have the same level of protection and rules across the European Union. The European landscape is in fact very fragmented and the various member countries regulate this delicate area in very different ways, with the risk of undermining the solidity of the European project.

The regulation touches on issues such as audience measurement and the advertising market, the functioning of public media, the transparency of media ownership, and the protection of sources. The text recognises journalism as a fundamental actor in public coexistence and defines the strong protection of press freedom as a necessary condition not only for the functioning of European democracies, but also for the European economic market.

The latter is a fundamental step because it is the instrument via which the Commission legitimises the regulation in the eyes of the member states. In fact, regulating the media is much more than an economic operation: it touches fundamental chords of the functioning of democracy and also concepts such as security, an issue that today remains the exclusive competence of states.

Here the first problems arise because the member states have seen the EMFA as a pitch invasion by the Commission, whose competences fall above all in the management of the common market.

 

Article 4: protection of editorial autonomy, protection of sources, and the threat of spyware

This fracture between the Commission and the member countries is especially true for Article 4, which more than others regulates the relationship between the media and the member states on the issue of security.

The starting assumption is that in recent years European states have shown little attention, if not total contempt, for the sacredness of the confidentiality of sources, especially since they have equipped themselves with new tools: spyware. These are digital products designed to exploit the vulnerabilities of other digital products and which allow covert surveillance of natural or legal persons, by monitoring, extracting, collecting, or analysing their data. The most famous is Pegasus, used to surveil journalists, politicians, lawyers, and activists. But there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, for a booming billion-dollar industry that is still too little known due to the climate of secrecy and opacity that states have built around it.

The Commission, having taken note of this, has decided to intervene by protecting the media through article 4 which can be summarised as follows:

  1. The media have the right to carry on their economic activities in the internal market without restrictions other than those permitted by Union law.
  2. Member states cannot interfere or influence the policies and editorial decisions of the media.
  3. Member states may not sanction, intercept, subject to surveillance, search or seizure, media professionals, their employees, or their family members for refusing to disclose information about their sources, unless justified by public interest.
  4. Member states may not install spyware in any device used by media professionals, their family members, or their employees unless the use is justified, on a case-by-case basis, by reasons of national security or the use is in an investigation on serious crimes, as required by national law and in accordance with Union law, and when any other measure would be inadequate to obtain the requested information.

The text therefore seeks to provide journalism with the necessary guarantees for its functioning, but at the same time opens the way for a violation of sources on the basis of public interest, investigations involving serious crimes (a restricted list of crimes considered particularly worrying by the EU jurisprudence), and national security issues.

 

A plurality of visions

Dozens of civil society and journalism organisations have analysed the text and, while finding it one step ahead of existing legislation, especially in some European countries, have also offered the Commission advice on how to improve it, in particular on two points. First, Article 4 must explicitly provide that any surveillance provision must be assessed by a judicial body, including the legitimacy and duration of the provision. Second, the text must remove the principle of national security – to date an extremely confused principle, legally vague and the cause of the major violations of professional secrecy, as confirmed by numerous journalistic investigations and academic research, in addition to the conclusions of the PEGA parliamentary commission, which in recent months has dealt specifically with the Pegasus spyware scandal.

However, things can always get worse. The modification proposal presented last June by the European Council, a body that represents the interests of the member states, worsens the protections of article 4 and reinforces the legitimacy of state surveillance for reasons of national security which, reads the text, must remain a guaranteed prerogative of the member states and never be challenged by the EMFA. Furthermore, the Council proposes that the legitimate use of surveillance and in particular of spyware be extended to dozens of other crimes, including minor crimes such as copyright infringements.

Among the countries promoting this pejorative draft we find Germany and France – countries producing Spyware technology – but also Greece, a country where surveillance abuses against journalists have become a topic of national relevance.

In July, however, the revision draft produced by the commissions of the European Parliament was presented, which incorporates the indications received from civil society and implements fundamental safeguards which make the surveillance of journalists and the use of spyware the last resort when any other tool available to member states does not produce satisfactory investigation results. On the other hand, some important requests were absent in the parliamentary draft: the elimination of the national security exception, the ban on spyware against the journalistic category, and strong cryptography as a legitimate professional protection tool for protecting sources.

 

The EMFA is on its way

The regulation is now awaiting its last phase, the trilateral discussion between the Commission, the European Council, and the Parliament. From this discussion a text will emerge which will be the synthesis of the positions of the three European institutions. Plausibly, the regulation will affirm those safeguards that are still absent in the national legislations of many EU countries. At the same time, it is easy to foresee that the EMFA will establish once and for all that it is possible and legitimate for member states and their police forces to access the confidential contents of journalistic sources. Journalists working in tomorrow’s Europe will therefore have to know that nothing of their work will be truly safe anymore.

This article was originally published on Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso

Coalition for Media Freedom: Government’s Proposals Significantly Deviate from Media Strategy and Prevent Reform of Media System

By
IJAS
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0

The Coalition for Media Freedom warns that the latest draft versions of the Law on Public Information and Media and the Law on Electronic Media, which were prepared by the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications, deviate significantly from the Media Strategy and render meaningless the key measures agreed upon by the media and journalists’ associations in 2020 and the Government of the Republic of Serbia.

The solutions offered by the Ministry in the Law on Public Information and Media enable the continuation of funding of media that frequently violate the Code of Journalists of Serbia, promote violence and use hate speech targeting dissidents of the authorities. Even though several months ago they themselves voted for the article of the Law that ensures that the Press Council’s data on violations of the Code of Journalists of Serbia is one of the key criteria for evaluating media that apply for co-financing of media projects from public funds, the representatives of the Government in the Working Group for drafting of this Law at the last moment before the public debate, make this legal solution meaningless by introducing the possibility that, practically, every media can establish its own self-regulatory body and issue certificates of compliance with the Code.

The text of the Law on Electronic Media proposal, contrary to the objectives of the Media Strategy as a document defining the Government’s policy in the field of media, waives the election of a new convocation of the Council of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM), and practically enables the smooth continuation of the work of the current REM Council. In addition to the fact that the existing members of the Council do not meet the requirements for membership in that body as defined by the new proposal of the Law, numerous domestic and international reports have been marking the REM Council as a critical point in selective and ineffective media regulation for years.

Contrary to the practice applied when it comes to other independent mechanisms, such as the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, or the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, the Government insists on preserving the REM in the state administration system and thus continuing the illegal control over the work of bodies that should represent an independent regulatory body.

For incomprehensible reasons, the representatives of the Government refuse to adopt the obligation of the Council of REM to adopt the Code of Labor of the members of the Council, which would prevent the current practice of abuse of this institution and arbitrariness in (non)decision-making.

Although the harmonization of domestic legislation with the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive was one of the key reasons for changes to the Law on Electronic Media, this directive was not consistently reflected in the proposal of the new Law, especially in relation to the provisions governing the freedom of reception and rebroadcasting.

Furthermore, with the proposal of the new Law, civil and judicial control of REM’s work is impossible, and organizations that send reports due to the behavior of media service providers are denied the right to protect the public interest in the field of information.

With the cynical explanation that the issue of the official campaign is not dealt with by the Media Strategy, but by the working group for the improvement of the political process, the Government refused to adopt the ODIHR recommendations related to the media coverage of the official campaign.

Finally, in both laws, the Government inserted an identical article at the last moment, which enables the state to return to ownership of the media and subsequently legalizes the current ownership of Telekom Srbija in the media, which is contrary to the current laws. In this way, the Government cancels the previous media reform and brings solutions contrary to the Media Strategy, which mandates the end of the privatization of the media.

We note that the Coalition has been participating and delegating its members in working groups for the amendment of media legislation for two years already, as well as that we very constructively sent our proposals, objections and comments within the given deadlines, all for the purpose of improving the situation in the media system, and improving the media pluralism and the right to public information.

Representatives of the Coalition participated in all meetings of the new working group in the period from November 2022 to April 2023, when all communication from the new ministry stops for more than three months. In the previous period, representatives of the Coalition participated in the work of working groups for the development of the Media Strategy and for monitoring its implementation.

The Coalition’s objections to these legal solutions are fully aligned with the current Media Strategy, which at one time received support and was adopted by the Government of Serbia. The strategic document is aligned with the Audio-Visual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) and is an important step forward in EU integration.

We believe that the solutions offered by the Coalition contribute to solving essential and strategically important issues. In addition, they also offer innovative solutions related to public information and media pluralism, especially in the digital space, which promotes the values of a new reflection of the regulatory and self-regulatory framework for media work, and strengthens the position of independent regulatory bodies.

The Coalition for Media Freedom believes that there are no conditions for the fulfillment of the Media Strategy nor conditions for the necessary reforms in the media system if the Government sticks to its legal proposals.

Also, if the public debate on media laws begins without the aforementioned key provisions, the Coalition will not be able to support such proposals and will seek support for its positions through public advocacy.

The Coalition for Media Freedom consists of the Association of Media, the Association of Online Media (AOM), the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina (NDNV), the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), the Business Association of Local and Independent Media “Local Press” and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation.

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Regional Platform for advocating media freedom and journalists’ safety is a network of journalist associations and media trade unions in Western Balkans countries established in January 2016 with the financial assistance of the European Union and within the EU Support to Regional Thematic Networks of Civil Society Organisations Program

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