International and domestic media watchdogs have accused the government and the opposition of sneaking in legal changes that will further curb press freedom and distort the media market in Macedonia.
Macedonia’s government and the opposition have used the turbulence surrounding the forthcoming ‘name’ referendum to reintroduce state-funded advertising, which was halted a few years ago, and introduce controls over online media – moves that watchdogs and journalists say will curb media freedom and distort the media market again.
Parliament passed these provisions, which are now part of the Electoral Code, on July 25, after the four main political parties in the country agreed on it as part of their talks about the forthcoming referendum on the historic ‘name’ agreement with Greece.
“The amendments enable interference by public authorities in the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas during electoral campaigns and in their editorial independence,” the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ said in a statement on Monday.
On August 9, the Council of Europe’s platform for the protection of journalism also issued a warning to the Macedonian parliament about the provisions.
The country’s leading Journalist’s Association, ZNM, the Independent Trade Union of Journalists and Media Workers, SSNM, the Macedonian Council of Media Ethics, SEEM, and even the state-run Audio and Audio Visual Agency, AVMU, have all criticised the changes.
The first provision allows political parties to use state budget money for their political advertisements during elections.
“This brings back, in a big way, the government advertisement campaigns from the time of the regime of [former Prime Minister Nikola] Gruevski, when the government spent public money on media campaigns about their alleged successes,” said Naser Selmani, the head of the ZNM.
Although the Social Democrat-led government claims this will regulate the financing of political parties and introduce an equal playing field, while in opposition, the Social Democrats spent years harshly criticising their predecessors, the administration led by Gruevski, the former chief of the right-wing VMRO DPMNE party, who spent millions on state-sponsored media campaigns.
The former government halted its controversial ad campaigns in 2015 after widespread criticism that it was using them to control the media and disrupt the media market. It did so after being entangled in a major wiretapping scandal which led to it being ousted in 2017, after a deep and prolonged political crisis.
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