Mass media in North Macedonia
Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues.
[2]: 14 The Law on Broadcasting Activity foresees restrictions to the broadcast of contents aimed at the violent overthrow of the constitutional order, military aggression, or incitement of national, racial, gender or religious hatred and intolerance, as well as programs liable to damage the physical, mental or development of children and youth.
Press coverage of election time is only self-regulated;[2]: 15 an independent study in 2013 found large imbalances and lack of professional standards, so that "some media news was used to directly manipulate the opinion of the electorate".
[2]: 15 Journalists in North Macedonia face "low salaries, poor job security and working conditions, and editorial pressure from owners".
[1] Most journalists in North Macedonia have rather low socio-economic status, and their labour and social rights are limited; many work without contracts or signing blank resignation in advance.
[2]: 18 The Code of Ethics of the Journalists of North Macedonia is set as the professional guideline; yet, violations of basic standards are widespread, e.g. in the use of judgemental labels, vague references, biased sources, and evaluatory framing.
[2]: 16 Moreover, the ruling party benefits from big discounts on airtime prices from friendly media during electoral periods.
The large use of advertisement funding by the ruling party is deemed to increase the media's financial dependence and foster pro-governmental alignment.
[1] The market features a high number of media, with a shrinking advertising revenue, and a fragmentation due to technological development and digitalisation.
Foreign investments in the Macedonian media are limited to Serbian companies – one of which is a monopolist in newspapers' printing and distribution, with ties to high-level security officials.
Weeklies include Republika, financial Kapital, Fokus, women's Tea Moderna and Makedonsko Sonce (est.
The Third channel broadcasts programmes in all the languages of the national minorities in North Macedonia, including Albanian (since 1948); Turkish (since 1945) 5 hours; Vlach (since 1991); Romany (since 1991); Serbian (since 2003) and Bosnian (since 2003) all 30 minutes each per day.
A European Union sponsored report says that with scores of TV and radio networks, the market is overcrowded and many local broadcasters are struggling to survive financially.
[9] MRTV also risks neglecting cultural pluralism obligations, in terms of programmes for minorities, as well as lacking impartiality and distance from government/majority politicians.
Manchevski continues to be the most prominent modern filmmaker in the country having subsequently written and directed Dust and Shadows.
[1] Legislation was aligned with EU standards with the February 2014 Law on Electronic Communications, to improve competition and consumers' rights.
Wireless access is available to about 95 percent of Macedonians, even those living in remote sheepherding mountain villages where people don't have phones.
The agency is now empowered to impose harsh fines and revoke licenses if it detects contents that harm vaguely-defined "public order" and "health or morals".
[25][26] There are cases that are “public secrets” in North Macedonia, such as that of the covert cross-ownership between A1 TV and the daily newspapers Vreme, Spic and Koha e re, but the regulatory authorities do not take action and an investigation into it has never been initiated.
[25] To address the issue of lack of media ownership transparency in the field of online media outlets, a group of Macedonian journalists started a project called MediaPedia[28] aiming at investigating, clarify and make public the ownership structures behind Macedonian web portals and to create a public database containing such information.
According to MediaPedia’s investigation there were two companies behind Kurir.mk website, namely Em Media Dooel and Iia Doo, that are part of a network of linked portals quoting each other and following a pro-governmental editorial policy.
Also, the group discovered that the director of Em Media was the brother of Vlado Misajilovski, state secretary of the Ministry for foreign affairs of the ruling party VMRO-DPMNE.
[27] In addition, from the investigation in the financial flows resulted that these two companies received funds directly from the government, as well as from other public institutions, such as the Municipality of Skopje, the Ministry of culture, etc.
[30] The investigative project Mediapedia has tried to disclose the ownership structures of several pro-government websites connected to bank accounts in Belize belonging to people having strong ties with the ruling party.
[31][32] Concentration of ownership is strong in the print media sector: out of six Macedonian-language daily newspapers, a single publishing company owns three.
[29] According to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN IFRA), one of the major challenges to independent and quality journalism is the symbiotic relationship between the ruling party and many media outlets and their owners.
[29] According to a 2015 WAN IFRA report, a variety of soft censorship mechanisms are used to silence or pressure journalists in North Macedonia.
[29] Soft censorship provides politicians and high-ranking officials simple tools to pressure journalists in often subtle ways.
For instance, this results in the lack of unbiased reporting on government's and state institutions' activities, corruption, issues concerning the ties between politics, business and media.
In North Macedonia, there are several connections between politicians and media owners; this is particularly visible in the work of the state-owned public broadcaster which is strongly influenced by the ruling party.
