The Council of judges in Macedonia stated that the biggest pressure on their work is currently coming from the media. The reactions are ironic, and media organizations have condemned the Council's statement.
The amendments to the Act on access to public information legalise the tendency of several public institution to charge for the costs of preparation of the copies of requested information. NGOs such as Transparency International and the Slovenian Association of Journalists criticise the new law that poses risks for media freedom and the work of journalists.
The police raid against the offices of the news agencies DİHA and Azadiya Welat was condemned and the two news agencies were praised for their truth revelations.
The OSCE presence in Albania organised from 16th to 18th September a training for journalists about environmental issues on Shkodra Lake. Regretfully, the event did not involve local journalists, who are the most informed on environmental issues and have authored in the past several investigations on the topic. The reason for such exclusion could be the intention to hide the failure of enviromental protection measures.
Macedonian experts are asking for changes in the public broadcasting service, namely for new strategies to stop partisan influence on the public broadcasting MRTV.
During the ongoing political negotiations, several journalists’ organizations presented their proposals about how to successfully de-politicize the media. The problems of major concern for journalists relate to the functioning of the public broadcasting service (Macedonian Radio Television, MPT) and to government non-transparent advertisement in the media.
“As long as in the countries of the OSCE journalists are threatened, imprisoned, attacked or beaten in the streets, we can not pretend that the problem does not exist”, said OSCE representative for Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic.
President Petro Poroshenko banned two BBC correspondents from Ukraine along with many Russian journalists and public figures. Тhe Bulgarian journalists Elena Joncheva and Bulgarian nationalist MP Magdalena Tasheva are also on the blacklist.
