The International Press Institute (IPI) today jointly publishes a report outlining the fragile media freedom progress in North Macedonia that was produced following an international fact-finding mission to the country. The report – Media Freedom in North Macedonia: Fragile Progress – was published today and is available online.

This report presents the findings and recommendations stemming from an international fact-finding mission to North Macedonia that took place from June 5-7, 2023, organized by the Association of Journalists of Macedonia.

The fact-finding mission of representatives of five leading press freedom organizations, including IPI, visited the country, meeting with the most relevant policymakers in Skopje to assess the persistent problems of the media sector.

It was joined by representatives of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Free Press Unlimited (FPU), International Press Institute (IPI), European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) and the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT).

The mission found progress has been made in recent years as the country continues to recover from the severe deterioration of media freedom during the previous decade. However, this progress is fragile, and much work remains to be done to consolidate these gains and tackle systemic challenges.

Executive Summary

One of the most complex issues for the development of a healthy media ecosystem is the question of how and when public funding should be used to help support public interest journalism. In an era when the traditional business model for journalism is under sustained pressure due to digital disruption, this debate has become more pertinent than ever. While multiple policy options exist for governments to help support media through public funding, each carries its own opportunities and risks. No model fits all national contexts, and local economic and historical characteristics must be assessed when developing the best approach to fostering a viable and sustainable media landscape.

In North Macedonia, the most acute economic challenges facing media stem from the country’s highly fragmented media landscape and the lack of an advertising market big enough to support it. Since the government amended the law in 2017 to prohibit state advertising campaigns in media due to rampant abuses under the previous administrations, no new system for supporting audiovisual media has been created to fill this revenue gap. Likewise, no form of systemic state support exists to sustain the country’s struggling local and community media sector. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the financial challenges facing the country’s entire media landscape.

Under pressure from the country’s terrestrial private television stations, the Social Democrat government has proposed to return to a system of state advertising in media. Draft legislation has been developed that would reform the current Article 102 of the Law on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, which prohibits state advertising in broadcast media. This major policy shift has been justified by the Ministry of Information Society and Administration (MISA) as providing a vital economic lifeline to struggling media at a time of uncertainty, while also improving the communication of government campaigns and policies to citizens. New safeguards have been proposed to try and ensure advertising is allocated in a fairer, non-political and more transparent way.

This approach has been opposed by the country’s leading journalistic and media associations and organizations, who warn that the reappearance of state advertising in media in North Macedonia risks a return to the clientelist practices of the past, with deeply damaging effects on media independence and freedom more widely. They secondly warn that under this system, by far the share of the envisaged state advertising funds would be allocated to the country’s five largest private TV stations, distorting the market and disadvantaging local, regional and community media. They further note that the reform would also disadvantage all online media given that the scope of the law does not regulate informative online portals. These groups are instead calling for a broader and more innovative form of financial support to media carrying out public interest journalism, with wider positive effects on media pluralism and quality journalism.

This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities associated with competing visions for financial support to media in North Macedonia and sets out recommendations for a way forward that supports media’s economic development while also promoting public interest journalism. To do so, it first briefly examines the history of the model of state advertising in North Macedonia to set out how this experience should inform future policy choices. The paper recommends that, given the clear risks associated with state advertising in countries with a history of clientelism, an alternative, project-based approach that establishes a fund for public interest journalism should be considered. In an alternative model, such a fund could be established alongside a reduced state advertising model strengthened with significant additional safeguards.

State Advertising: A History of Abuse in North Macedonia

State advertising for public awareness and information campaigns has long been one of the dominant forms of state support for media in Europe and around the world. For many media, this has represented a major source of revenue and offset losses from falling print sales or the migration of advertising online. Yet, of all the forms of direct state support to media, it is widely perceived as carrying the largest risks. In Europe, an increasing body of academic work examining the phenomenon of media capture has identified how state advertising has been weaponized by governments to control editorial coverage. In several countries within the EU and the Western Balkans, revenue from state advertising is allocated in a non-transparent and discriminatory manner to reward political alignment with the government, while simultaneously being withdrawn or denied to critical media. While many EU countries have established robust systems to ensure this funding is not abused, a system of patronage is deeply ingrained in other EU Member States such as Hungary and Poland, with damaging effects on the viability of independent media outlets.

Since its independence, North Macedonia has suffered from repeated waves of non-democratic manipulation of state advertising by governments. Under the VMRO-DPMNE administration of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who later fled the country to avoid corruption charges, abuses of state advertising campaigns reached their peak, as millions of euros of public money were used to systematically support media moguls close to the government in return for favorable media coverage. While the government justified the PR campaigns as vital for communicating messages to the public about legal reforms or public health issues, experts described the advertising as an indirect form of bribery between politics and media. After the VMRO-DPMNE administration fell and the Social Democrats were elected to government in 2017, a moratorium was placed on public campaigns in private media. Article 102 of the Law on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services formally bans all advertising in private broadcast media by all public authorities at both the national and municipal levels by restricting the planning of funds for this purpose (amendments as of December 31, 2018). This legal framework has remained unchanged since.

Financial Challenges: A Fragmented Media Market

The ban on state advertising in media is widely recognized as having an overall positive effect on limiting corrupt connections between media outlets and political interest in North Macedonia. Local journalistic and media organizations have warned in recent years of sporadic attempts of misuse by certain public enterprises in recent years, and compliance is not complete. However, overall this shift in culture is noted by international press freedom organizations and research organizations as severing the toxic link between private media and government and bolstering media independence. Media freedom groups recognize the ban as being justified, when set against the backdrop of the national experience with state advertising thus far. However, after the restriction was imposed many media faced a new reality in which a sizable amount of the revenue they require for business operations had disappeared.

In North Macedonia – a highly fragmented market in which many broadcast media compete for a share of an already small advertising pie – the ban has exacerbated financial challenges. In the broadcast market, according to the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, there are a total of 107 broadcasters: 44 television channels and 63 radio stations. Eleven TV channels broadcast programs at the national level, with 18 at the regional level and 15 at the local level (via cable operators). In the radio market, four stations broadcast programs nationally, 16 at the regional level (of which 1 is a non-profit radio), and 43 at the local level (3 are non-profit). For a country of North Macedonia’s size and demographics, this is a highly densely populated broadcast media landscape. Advertising from private capital – historically the biggest source of revenue for both private print and broadcast media – has not proven sufficient to sustain such a large number of media entities. While economic viability for private media was challenging in the past, these issues were exacerbated further by the COVID-19 pandemic, as advertising revenue from private capital collapsed. Despite limited grants from international donors, media viability and sustainability remain weak. It has been repeatedly recognized that the country lacks a specific initiative or a model to support the sustainability of regional and local media.

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