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1999 IHF-HR COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS
International Helsinki Federation Human Right Reports
- extracts on Media situation
Macedonia
Freedom of Expression and the Media
During 1999, no major changes took place in the electronic media field.
Authorities failed to take any measures to eliminate the widespread operation of
pirate radio and television stations. Even those with concessions broadcast
without paying the bills required by law. The 1997 law on the broadcasting
activity remained in force, although it had been widely criticized for not
providing independent and transparent licensing and bidding procedures.
The new government, which came into power at the end of 1998 and consisted of
three coalition partners, swiftly changed the leadership of the governmental
press, the MRTV and the publishing houses Nova Makedonija, Vecer (Macedonian
language), Flaka (Albanian language) and Birlik (Turkish language). The MRTV
openly gave its support to the government and its policies.
· In February, the Helsinki Committee began a media campaign for mutual
ethnic tolerance. Its program was aired by all media outlets except the MRTV,
who refused to broadcast the program even against payment.
In a positive development, new private publishing houses were opened, with
the result that new newspapers were created, bringing a wider variety in the
press and gradually destroying the monopoly of NIP Nova Makedonija. However, NIP
Nova Makedonija still had the distribution monopoly. Independent newspapers were
sold mainly by street-sellers.
There were no official criteria in 1999 for governing the allocation of
budget funds to subsidize the media. Seventy-five percent of these funds ended
up going to NIP Nova Makedonija, whose shareholder was the government.
The constitution, the law on public information, the law on broadcasting
activity and the criminal code all guaranteed the freedom of speech. This
freedom was questioned by the Broadcasting Council in a fax sent to A1
television station, which stated that with its criticism of the council’s work,
A1 had changed its status from a concession holder to a «monitoring service,»
a role that was not appropriate. In the same message, the council openly
intimidated the station by announcing that it would revise the decision to issue
a concession to A1.
Media coverage of the Kosovo refugee crisis was generally balanced and
objective although media interest evidently decreased as a smaller wave of Serb
and Roma refugees arrived later. Presidential Elections
Media coverage of the second round of presidential elections was similar to
the 1998 parliamentary elections. The printed media - which was mainly financed
by the state budget - and the MRTV gave biased support to candidates of the
governmental coalition, although the MRTV, as a public broadcast enterprise,
should have remained objective.
During the first round of elections, when six candidates were still competing,
the MTV in particular reported extensively about the activities of the
presidential candidate of the governing party, VMRO-DPMNE, who was the Deputy
Foreign Minister at the time. The outlet covered, at length, all of his
activities in the main news programs.
The publishing houses Nova Makedonija and Flaka followed the same practice.
Before the campaign began, Nova Makedonija decided only to publish
advertisements of the coalition parties. The Broadcasting Council issued
recommendations for equal coverage in the electronic media, but the
recommendation remained ineffective as there was no mechanism by which to punish
those outlets that refused to follow the rules. During the second round of
elections, the International Election Observation Mission reported partisan
pro-governmental coverage by the MRTV, who supported Boris Trajkovski, while the
private channel Sitel TV devoted a large proportion of news programming to a
critique of the government. Other monitored electronic media, including A1,
Telma, Channel 5, and TV Era, were largely neutral in their coverage. The
pro-government and largely publicly-owned daily Nova Makedonija continued its
biased coverage in favor of Trajkovski. Utrinski Vvesnik, again, exhibited a
strong bias towards Tito Petkovski of the opposition SDSM. The observation
mission noted that the coverage of Devnik was particularly balanced.
· On 14 November, the local, private, opposition-oriented television station
Sitel (in Skopje) went off the air for several hours, allegedly due to an
electric installation defect. On 5 December, the day of the second voting, Sitel
and another private station A1" (near Kumanovo) went off the air again for
several hours. The police initiated an investigation into the A1 case because
its electricity was forcefully cut. Further, Sitel believed that its program was
taken off the air intentionally by the management of the electricity company,
whose leadership represented the VMRO. On 5 December, VMRO-DPMNE and its
coalition partner, the DPA, had accused the two stations of breaking the
pre-election silence by broadcasting "lies" from the local SDSM
headquarters.
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