1998 World Press Freedom Review

Klime Babunski

Editor of the Macedonian Media Bulletin

The print media continued its development this year. The three dailies, (according to the circulation) Vecer, Dnevnik and Nova Makedonija got a new member in the family - daily Makedonija Denes (Macedonia Today) which appeared in September one month before the election.

In February, "The Law on Establishing Public Enterprise Macedonian Broadcasting" - which regulates the status and work of the former Department of transmitters, which was part of the Macedonian Radio and Television, and "The Law on establishing public enterprise Macedonian Radio and Television" - which regulates the programming part of the public broadcasting were adopted. According to the second law on the top of the structure of Macedonian Radio and Television (MRT) is the Board of Governors - 11 members: 7 are elected from the Parliament and 4 members are employees of the MRT. The members are well known public figures but none of them can be in a position in the Government or member of the Broadcasting Council, or member of the leadership of any political party. Also the member of the Board of Governors can not be employed in some private radio or TV station. The duties of the Board of Governors are to adopt the Statute of the MRT, the yearly financial plan and the yearly report of the MRT.

However the most powerful is the General Manager of MRT and/or the Managers of Macedonian TV and Macedonian Radio, who are at the same time the editors-in-chief, and are responsible for the daily decisions in programme producing. All of them are appointed by Parliament. This could be very interesting because of the election results. The current "trio" in the MRT have been appointed by the former SDSM/PDP/SPM Government, so the question is how the new VMRO-DPMNE/DA/PDA Government will react, having in mind that VMRO-DPMNE and DA have needed parliamentary majorities to appoint the new "trio" of MRT. Obviously, bad Law is bad Law regardless of the Government. In this case the point is that there is no distinction between MRT and other "normal" public enterprises. The question is: will the new Government continue to act as the old one and continue to treat MRT as any other state-owned company, or will it start the process of transforming the MRT into public service broadcasting. So far nothing has happened, but there are many new names and combinations for these three positions.

On September 30, with a staff of 15 journalists, the Macedonian Information Agency started operations. The agency has a 24 hour service and issues its services (by e-mail or fax) five times per day in Macedonian and twice in English language. MIA receives services from Deutsche Press Agentur, Bulgarian Telegraph Agency and Turkish information agency Anadolia. MIA also has a network of domestic correspondents. The services of MIA are already being sent to more than 100 users in Macedonia and to about 30 subscribers abroad. According to the Director of MIA, Zoran Ivanov, from next year two new services will be started: for sport and for culture. Also from 1999 MIA will have facilities to provide photo and phono services.

In view of the change of government, the question of the new Director of MIA has been raised.

The European Institute for the Media monitored the media coverage in the run-up to the October elections. They found that the major problems, which stall the development of Macedonian Media are: 1) The limited scope of competence of the Broadcasting Council, which has an advisory rather than regulatory function; 2) Affiliation between the political parties and the media leading to unbalanced coverage; 3) Widespread video piracy on private television; 4)Unfair competition by certain local media through undercutting advertising rates; 5) Print and distribution difficulties for independent media; 6) Low advertising revenue. However, the EIM monitoring mission concluded that the Macedonian media through their variety, gave the electorate a reasonably complete picture of the issues, parties and candidates in the elections. The mission especially commended the efforts of some private broadcasters as well of the national public service broadcaster to provide candidates with fairly balanced free access to the media.

The attitude of the electronic media during the campaign was mainly determined by two criteria: the ethnicity of the community served by the broadcaster and a political orientation of the station’s management and its owner. MRT had extensive coverage with fair treatment of the major parties in free presentation time.

However, extensive and predominantly positive coverage was given to the incumbent government, particularly in the news programme. Some private electronic media were objective and fair (A1, Telma) others were found to be biased and propagandistic (Sitel, Channel 5)

As far as print media are concerned, the mission noted that while news reporting was generally neutral and factual, there was a noticeable trend in some newspapers towards favoring one party at the expense of others. This was most apparent with the publicly financed Nova Makedonija, but also with Fakti, at least as far as the quantity is concerned, the EIM found.

But the biggest "mediaquake" came after the election and its center is in Newspaper Publishing House (NPH) "Nova Makedonija". This firm is publisher of two dailies: Nova Makedonija and Vecer, plus Flaka e Valezarimit - a daily in the Albanian language, Birlik - newspaper published three times a week in Turkish, weekly Puls, a weekly newspapers for school children and youth, news agency MakPress.

As it is with most of such firms, they are "naturally" unprepared for the transition, but the current problems are the most serious that the share holding company "Nova Makedonija" has ever had.

For the broader public everything started at the beginning of December, when the editor-in-chief of daily Vecer, Stojan Nasev, published an open letter explaining pressures during the election campaign from the main person in the company Pande Kolemishevski. The next day Nasev was no longer editor-in-chief of Vecer. However the reaction of the people in and out of NPH "Nova Makedonija" was that Nasev is too involved, being for long time one of the leading persons in the company, to excuse himself with such a letter. Nasev answered that his intention was far for providing any personal excuse, but he just wanted to save the daily and gain editorial (also financial) independence from the big system of "Nova Makedonija". This idea in not new; it has been vital before the decision for privatization model was taken two years ago. Now the same idea is high on the agenda and is supported by some of the editors from various editorial offices. Of course this is only one solution; the other possible solution is like some journalists of weekly Puls already announced. They are going to established a new weekly. Actually there are three main models for solving the bad situation. One is that all newspapers should became independent entities - this idea is mainly supported from the editors; the second is that nothing has to change, so everything has to stay in the frame of the share holding company NPH "Nova Makedonija"; and the third model trys to sell the idea of becoming state property - which is mostly supported by technical staff.

The company was privatized two years ago, but from that time very little has changed - it stays one big firm with its own printing house, distribution network, marketing, and at the same time none of the newspapers has its own financial or even editorial independence. The big Chief - Pande Kolemishevski stays on the top of everything.

There is a difference in the amount of money, according to various sources, but all sources agree that the current financial situation of NPH "Nova Makedonija" is very bad, and that the amount of debts is so great that it is hard to believe that the company itself is able to give the money back. Although the NPH "Nova Makedonija" has been privatized, the biggest share holder - with 32 percent of shares - is the Government.

The Government try "to stay outside" of all these problems, and even the President of the Government, Georgievski declared that the Government is not going to use its shares to put any pressure to change the current team of managers in NPH "Nova Makedonija".

On December 30, when the assembly of shareholders takes place a lot of important answers should be given. But one thing is more or less already known - it is hard to believe that Pande Kolemishevski is going to keep his position. The new General Manager and President of the Governing Board and all other members of this Board should answer to the share holders and to the public, where and how all the money has gone; why the financial situation is so bad; how will the relationship with the government be defined and what are the consequences for the editorial policy. There is a long way in front of NPH "Nova Makedonija" to become "nova" - "new"!

However, The worst events on the media scene occured in July and December this year.

In July, Nikola Mladenov, owner and editor of weekly FOKUS was attacked by three unknown persons at the entrance to his home. Mladenov suffered bad back injuries. No suspects have been apprehended to date. According to Mladenov, neither he nor his firm have any debts, so the reason for the attack is the editorial policy of the newspaper, which is often on crime and corruption, especially in the government. The editor of FOKUS, Zoran Dimitrovski said that "the attack was rather revenge because of such writing, than direct political pressure. Actually there were a lot of threats, but we cannot connect automatically any of them with this attack."

In December, the car of the owner and manager of local TV station TV IRIS from Stip, was destroyed by fire. The Manager, Simeon Marjanov, stated that: "behind this criminal act, there is a political background, which can be proved with the recorded threats by phone, in the days before the act," MIA reported.

Marjanov also said that this attack is actually an attack to the free and independent journalism in Macedonia, and sent an open appeal to the responsible institutions to find the criminals as soon as possible.