The image theft tradition seems omnipresent in the Greek media sphere. During our research, we realized that it was difficult to find a local photographer without at least one experience of his/her photography used by Greek media without authorization.
Beaten, persecuted, called to public lynch: it is how journalists worked the past year in Macedonia. Those are the conclusions of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, in its report regarding the freedom of the media and the security of journalists in 2017.
Opposition does not think that the prime minister Duško Marković is going to stop political pressures on public broadcaster. They consider Marković to be more loyal to his party, then to the interests of Montenegro as a state.
Montenegrin goverment needs to make a move to preserve editorial independence of RTCG (public TV), otherwise its democratic credibility will be reduced. The US Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Brian Hoyt Yee thinks that allowing the ruling party to take over RTCG once again, it could be a major step back in terms euro-atlantic road of Montenegro.
The editorial line of RTSH (the state television in Albania) during the spreading of Ponzi fraud financial schemes (called “pyramids”) in 1992-1997 was a shameful example of use of media by corrupted and incompetent politicians. After more than 25 years, the national TV channel “apologizes” throught a movie.
In a recent interview Nikola Vukčević - Montenegrin movie director - said that he was removed from public television because the government want to change the editorial policy of RTCG: “Government and ruling party want to have a tool for their own needs, and are not interested in citizens needs of having a public broadcaster”.
There is not a single public broadcaster in the region that is fully independent from the government, media experts agree. A possible solution may be a system direclty financed by citizens.
According to “Vijesti” it is difficult to talk about freedom of the media, freedom of speech and professional journalism in a country that has not reached the most basic democratic standards and that has never managed to change the fact that everything is controlled by politics.
Another scandal has involved media’s world: the manipulation of TVaudience. The investigation conducted by Shqiptarja.com shows that the company Abacus has never made the minimum investment (in terms of technology and human resources) to make the monitoring of the public really possible: according to Shqiptarja.com Abacus would be an “empty box”, paid by advertising agencies and able to “manipulate” the television market ...
