Indicators of Risks to Media Pluralism

Why? 

There is no publicly available credible audience measurement in any of the markets (print, television, radio, online) in North Macedonia. Although Nielsen is present in the North Macedonian market, the methodology and the measurements are not in usable format or were made available for the study. An association of top 5 private broadcasters, Macedonian Media Association, in the country own the Television Audience measurements (produced by Nielsen) but the data measured amounts to only about 50% of the market which indicates that in terms of audience share the top 4 might not reach the 50% threshold, however with the lack of credible data this cannot be confirmed. In principle, lack of audience data indicates risks to Media Audience Concentration because it does not allow the regulators or other actors of the market to ascertain the position and influence the media outlets might have in the market. However market shares of the top 4 players (Sitel, Kanal 5, Alsat and Alfa) indicate a market share of 81.21% which is indicative of a concentrated market.

Why? 

MOM mapped eleven TV outlets from which the public broadcaster has the biggest market share of almost half of the portion (48.7%). 

In the TV market, from the selected and mapped TV outlets, excluding the public broadcaster, the top 4 owners have 81% of the market share. Goran Ivanovski (Sitel) has 35.7% of the market share, while Emil Stojmenov (Kanal 5) has 20.9%, The Velija family (Alsat-M) has 14% and Peter Schatz (Alfa) has 10.6%. 

The two biggest owners in the radio market have more than two thirds or 87% of the market share. The top owners in the radio are Viktor Gavrilov (Kanal 77) with 47% of the market share while the three owners of Radio Antenna 5, Petrov, Janevski and Gushev with 40% total. In the MOM database four radios were analyzed. 

In the print (newspapers) market, MOM analyzed five print outlets, four dailies and a weekly. More than half of the market share (59%) belongs to the top two owners, Vladimir Galjak/Dragan Zivkovic (Sloboden Pecat) with 38% and Lirim Dulovi (Koha) who has 21% of the analyzed market share.

MOM mapped thirteen online media outlets and analyzed their market share. From the data collected and analyzed, the top 4 owners have 77% of the market share: Agnes Adamik (Kurir, Republika) with 37.5%, Aleksandar Manev (Faktor) with 22.8%, Biljana Ilic Geroska (Plusinfo) with 9.5% and Goran Mihajlovski (SDK) with a market share of 7.6%.

Why?

The issues related to media concentration are regulated by the 2013 Law on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services (LAAMS), in which the following aspects are regulated in a separate chapter titled "Protection of Pluralism and Diversity of Audio and Audiovisual Media Services": the limitations regarding the horizontal and vertical integration of the capital have been determined; a ban on secret partnerships among broadcasters has been established;

The only criterion for assessing the existence of illegal media concentration within the same relevant market (horizontal integration) is the number of broadcasting licenses that one physical or legal entity can be granted at national, regional or local level, which is identified either through the capital share in the ownership of a specific company or through the shares of the related persons.   

There are several blind spots of the current provisions on media concentration: the existing rules are designed for a “traditional” media environment (radio, television, press…) and does not take into consideration the take-up of new services and platforms (non-linear services, online media, video-sharing platforms, social networks, search engines…) through which a significant and ever-growing number of people are informed, educated and entertained; the provisions are very strict in terms of limitations on geographical concentration, both in terms of licences and coverage areas; there is a ban on cross-ownership between broadcasting and newspapers which is rarely applied elsewhere in Europe and, when it is, it is only applied in large markets; the provisions about the cases of media concentration created through related persons are unclear and the specific aspects of the definition of related persons is very vague.

The illegal media concentration is determined only for broadcasters. The print media is only indirectly regulated, through the prohibition on ownership concentration between broadcasters and publishers of daily newspapers. Online media are not yet covered by the rules governing illegal media concentration.

The competent body for determining illegal media concentration is the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, which is clearly stated in the Article 6 of the LAAMS in which the competences of the media regulator are stipulated. In addition to determining impermissible media concentration, the Agency has the authority to decide on the granting, revocation or extension of licenses for television or radio broadcasting, to take care of the protection and development of the pluralism of audio and audiovisual media services, to encourage and support the existence of diverse, independent and independent audio and audiovisual media services, to encourage freedom of expression, to take care of ensuring transparency in the work of broadcasters, to take care of the protection of citizens' interests in the field of audio and audiovisual media services, to carry out monitoring and to takes measures in cases where violations of the provisions of the law and by-laws are established, to encourage media literacy etc.

Why?

In the MOM database of selected 31 media outlets, nine TV companies (the public broadcaster excluded) have 74.5% of the market share, the five print have 15%, the portion that the thirteen online media outlets have is 5.9% and the smallest portion of 4.6% of market share is from the four radios.

From the mapped media outlets, the top 8 owners across all media sectors have a market share of 80% which according to MOM methodology is high concentration. The top 8 owners are:

CBC Sitel (26.6%); CBC Kanal 5 (15.6%); CBC Alsat-M (10.5%); CBC Alfa (7.9%); CBC TV Makpetrol - Telma (7.6%); Sloboden Pecat (5.7%); Koha production (3.2%); CBC Company 21 (3.2%)

Why?

Article 39 of the LAAMS refers to the diagonal concentration of capital, that is the integration of capital between the undertakings on different relevant markets. The current rules restrict the concentration between broadcasters (radio and television) and daily newspapers or news agencies. A person who is a founder of a radio or television station must not be a founder of a daily newspaper that is distributed at the same time in the area where the radio and/or television program is broadcast, nor of a news agency. In terms of concentration between television and radio, the Law is unclear.        

Regulatory Safeguard Score: 7 out of 8 (87.5%)

Why?

Our sample includes 11 Television stations, 5 radios, 5 print editions and 13 online outlets, in total 34 media outlets. In 91% of cases data was publicly available, i.e. traceable in public records. Only the public broadcaster Macedonian Radio Television, which is represented with three media in this database, (one radio and two TV channels), is actively transparent. Its stations represent 9% of the media in this database. 

The ownership data for 31 of the media was at least publicly available through the open databases, the annual reports of the Agency for Audio and Audio-Visual Media and the Central Registry. Unlike in most countries in the region, the business registry in North Macedonia is not open to search for free, so the data obtained through it has to be paid for. There is an exception rule for investigative journalists to obtain data with FOIA requests.

Unlike most media, the Macedonian Radio-Television, as a public broadcaster, is legally obliged to publish reports about its work. 

Ownership of the television stations, radios and the press is publicly available through the media register maintained by the Audio and Audio-Visual Media Agency. In addition, the Agency publishes an annual report on the ownership of the media, in which it is published which companies or persons are behind them.

However, the Agency has no such mandate for online media. Data about their registration, and therefore information on who owns them, can be found through the database of MARNET - the Macedonian Academic Research Network, which is open and free. That information is available solely for mk domains. Online media that have sites on other domains can not be tracked in this way. 

No company actively disguised the ownership structure or has unavailable data .

Why?

The Law on Media (Article 15) stipulates an obligation for broadcasters to provide publicity in their operations, namely: toward the media regulator (in such a way that by March 31 of the current year at the latest, on a special form prescribed by the regulator, they shall submit data on the operation in the previous year) and directly to the public (in a way that at least three times a year of their own program, in prime time, they shall publish data on ownership, editorial newsroom and funding sources).

With the same article, it is determined that publishers of print media are obliged to publish the ownership data in at least one daily newspaper, once a year.

The legal obligation to ensure publicity in operations applies to broadcasters (television and radio stations) and print media. Broadcasters have an obligation to provide data to the media regulator once a year, and to the public three times a year. Print media publishers publish the data to the public once a year. Online media publishers are excluded from the regulation.

Why?

8.1 and 8.2 North Macedonia has very strict rules on prevention of media concentration in broadcasting, including the possibility for political parties, political figures, elected or appointed officials, to own broadcast media. (The rules, according to many, are now too restrictive and actively prevent further development of the market, especially in terms of its consolidation to increase the sustainability). In the past, there were media owned by leaders of minor political parties, and with the introduction of the strict rules in 2005, there was a period of prominence of proxy owners in the broadcasting sector, in the effort to avoid the different restriction or conflict of interest situation. However, combined with the rules on ownership transparency, both in radio and television, that danger has been nonexistent. Which is not to say that individual media outlets don’t clearly lean towards one or another political party. In fact, the trend has been for the major broadcasters to visibly change their editorial approaches on election day, depending on how well the opposition was doing or not in the elections. 

8.3 Print media have been an afterthought for quite some time, quickly losing relevance, at least in their physical form. There are indications that their online extensions may retain some of the influence. The owner of one of the dailies (Nova Makedonija) used to have political ambitions and has established and led a political party, but those days seem to be over. Ideological, if not party, affiliations are evident with some print media.

8.4  The situation is quite different in the online news media sector. The major political parties of the government and the opposition all have their stables of friendly news sites, and they also use their party web-sites as news-sites of a sort, to promote the party line and attack the political opponents. One illustration and indicator how widespread that practice is can be found in the distribution of state subsidized political advertising campaign funding by political parties, which all allocated all the funds available for online advertising to friendly news-sites (some of them established just several months before the elections, with that particular purpose in mind. 

8.5 Ownership is transparent and subject to strict legal rules (Law on Media and Law on Audiovisual Media Services) for broadcast and print media, the situation is much different for online media. It may be the fact that affiliation or true ownership of news-sites is a “public secret”, but political parties and the owners of outright politically or ideologically aligned news-sites seem to make great effort to cover their involvement, usually through proxy owners. Every once in a while a “scandal” emerges in public when such networks, connected to prominent political entity (party, party leader, elected public official, etc.) are uncovered and exposed in public.

8.6 Strict rules apply for broadcast media (both horizontal and vertical concentration is prohibited), and transparency rules apply to print media. The situation with online media is cause for concern, as noted above, and there is a lot of pressure to legislate for transparency of ownership and political affiliation in that area, too.

8.7 A big part of the online news-sites scene is covered by outlets established to promote the party line and attack the opponents (in government and in opposition, likewise). How much actual interference is necessary, however, is unclear, as those newsrooms were created and personnel was recruited having those objectives in mind. 

8.8 Internal self-regulatory documents, such as newsroom editorial statues or standards for individual media are non-existent in North Macedonia, with exception of the public broadcasting service MRT. Most media are members, as individual entities or through trade associations, of the Media Ethics Council, which doesn’t interfere in matters of internal relations of the media outlets and their newsrooms. Most media also formally accept the Code of Ethics of the Media Ethics Council (recently ethical guidelines were adopted specifically for the online media). 

Score: 1.88 (Medium Risk)

Why?

9.1 The number of physical copies, and by extension numbers of sold copy, has fallen below any level of sustainability (the four daily newspapers, for example, now print between themselves about 15,000 copies per day). Distribution now goes through a small number of independent vendors (news-agents, tobacco shops that are still interested to carry newspapers) and a couple of supermarket chains. While in the past, there were cases of a supermarket chain (with politically affiliated ownership) refusing to distribute newspapers critical of the government, there are no indicators currently of such or similar practices. It should be noted that the one daily in Albanian language is not distributed in areas without Albanian population, although it positions itself as a national coverage paper. 

9.2 National radio broadcasters transmit their programmes using the services of the Public Enterprise “Macedonian Broadcasting” (PEMB). While there may be complaints about the annual fee radio stations pay to PEMB for the use of antennas and maintenance of the network becoming unaffordable, there are no indicators, or past instances, of PEMB taking any discriminatory action against individual or a group of broadcasters. Local radio stations usually use their own antennas to transmit programmes to their zone of coverage. 

9.3 Commercial digital terrestrial TV stations are distributed over two digital multiplexes, operated by the foreign-owned A1 Macedonia telecommunications company (owned by A1 Telecom Austria Group). The public broadcasting service has two multiplexes dedicated to its programming services. It should be noted that less than 4% of the population accesses television content through aerial antenna, and the vast majority, over 90 percent, accesses television using cable or IPTV services. There are two major cable TV networks. A1 is owned by A1 Telecom Austria, and Telekabel is owned by a Macedonian national. The leading IPTV provider, Makedonski Telekom is dominantly owned by Magyar Telecom (part of the Deutsche Telecom Group), and the government of North Macedonia owns 34.81 percent of the shares. One DVB-S service, Total TV, is owned by the Serbian United Group. The terrestrial TV broadcasters (especially those with national coverage license) have been engaged in prolonged conflict with cable and IPTV providers, centered on copyright and associated rights issues. In absence of clear “must carry” rules, they demand payments from cable operators for retransmission of their programming services, while refusing the possibility that cable operators may choose not to carry them. There were no major instances of politically motivated discriminatory actions by the distribution services. 

9.4 The major telecommunications companies (Macedonian Telekom, A1 and Telekabel) are also the leading providers of internet services, with several other smaller companies operating in the market. There have been no instances of politically or otherwise motivated discriminatory actions against any media outlet. 

9.5 While the Macedonian advertising market has many problems (available advertising spending is not nearly enough to sustain the overcrowded media scene, common misunderstandings of the very principles on which advertising industry functions, changing circumstances brought about by the digital disruption, etc.) there is no evidence, even anecdotal, of advertising agencies acting against independent media or discriminating them. Due to a pricing war that erupted between the major TV broadcasters in the late 2000s, agencies have gained the dominant position in the advertising market. The decisions on spending of advertising budgets are taken in cooperation with the advertisers, and agencies say that they listen to specific wishes of the advertisers in that regard. There is anecdotal evidence that major advertisers have been averse of spending their advertising dollars in political or news content, preferring entertainment programs and content. Another long-standing trend is for advertisers to choose to distribute their advertising budgets in a way to ensure that they will spread the spending across as many platforms or players as possible, to avoid accusations of favoring single entities for political or other reasons. 

9.6 Audience measurement in broadcasting in North Macedonia has always faced the same concerns and accusations of being non-transparent, favoring or discriminating against certain actors in the scene. The current TV ratings system was imposed by the 2013 Audiovisual Media Services Law, under which a joint industry committee was established and Nielsen was selected to perform the audience measurement. The system favors the terrestrial broadcasters (or discriminates against cable or satellite broadcasters) and currently it measures the ratings of the five national terrestrial TV networks only. They themselves are not satisfied with its reports and there are frequent complaints against Nielsen of tampering with the findings to favor individual TV broadcasters. A new system, that would cover all or the majority of the players in the market, based on the same (self-regulatory) principle of a joint industry committee is necessary. The audiovisual regulatory authority relies on public opinion polls methodology to measure audience ratings for its quarterly and annual reports for all broadcasters other than the national DVB-T networks. That methodology is also seen as not very reliable, although it provides some more general insight in audience habits and preferences. So far, it is known that the leading IPTV provider Makedonski Telekom has an internal system that is capable of presenting real time figures of what each of their subscribers is watching at any given time, but those figures are not public. There is no indication that any of those services would discriminate on political grounds. For other media platforms – print media treat the figures about sold circulation as a closely guarded secret; online media mostly rely on services like Google Analytics, and past efforts to establish a proper independent audience measurement system have failed, often for political reasons, bearing in mind the polarization of the scene along political lines. 

Why?

10.1 and 10.2 At the moment, state advertising is forbidden for broadcasting. There is a body of evidence that shows that local self-governments manage to direct funding towards local media (politically motivated, to promote the work of local administrations) but not in the form of classic advertising (it looks more like sponsorship, purchasing air-time, for instance, for live broadcasts from sessions of municipal councils, and other activities of the local administration). The state (government, state and public institutions, public enterprises, etc.) cannot do any media buying on television and radio, and are limited to digital and print media advertising. There is a law in the Parliament at this moment, that aims to reintroduce the ability of government and state institutions to do media buying on broadcasting media. However, the actual solutions it offers make it more of a law to establish a system of indirect subsidies for the broadcast media. While the rules may be transparent, it does not really take into account the nature and system of functioning of advertising industry, such as size or demographics of the audiences of the broadcast media, but sets a strict system of distribution of mandatory funding that needs to be earmarked in the state budget and the budgets of local self-governments, in a linear fashion. The fairness of the proposed rules is equally questionable, having in mind the fact that the proposed distribution scheme favours the national DVB-T broadcasters, which will get a huge proportion of the proposed funding scheme (65 per cent will go to the 5 biggest TV ). 

10.3 and 10.4 At the moment, the state cannot purchase advertising time on TV broadcasters. However, if the proposed changes to the Law on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services are adopted, it will amount to between 25 and 30 percent of the total television advertising market of 16 million, according to the reported advertising earnings for TV in the annual report on the broadcasting market prepared by the audiovisual regulatory body. 

10.5 There is no data available on the share of state advertising as part of the overall newspaper advertising market. On the other hand, print media (in their physical form) depend almost fully on a form of indirect state subsidies, mandatory public notices (public calls, competitions, tenders, court, notary and executioner notices) which they treat as a competitive advertising market that saw a form of price war in the years since it was legally installed. 

10.6 There is no data available on the online market either. But knowing that all political parties have their “fleets” of online news sites (propaganda mouthpieces) and the fact that unlike TV advertising, the state can engage in media buying on online media, estimates can vary, certainly above 10% for some online news media, at least. As an illustration, we can consider the conduct of political parties during election campaigns (their media buying for election campaign political advertising is fully subsidized by the state budget) when they mostly spent their allocations for online advertising to “friendly” or affiliated news-sites. Occasionally, figures are released on government’s spending for advertising on big tech platforms, primarily Facebook. 

10.7 Direct subsidies are currently available only to the print media: 50% of costs of printing and distribution, paid to the publishers upon presentation of invoices. The rules are clear and transparent and there are no indicators or complaints indicating unfair or irregular processing of the direct subsidies. 

10.8 Indirect subsidies are also available, as noted above, for print media, in the form of mandatory public notices, the legal obligation for all state institutions to publish tenders, public calls and competitions, judicial, executors or notary notices, etc. in at least one daily in Macedonian language and one daily in Albanian language. Mandatory public notices amount, according to some estimates, to over 95% of the income of the daily newspapers. Among the three dailies published in Macedonian language, they are actually treated as commercial advertising with fierce competition in pricing to attract the public notices. Print media are also subject to tax relief (privileged VAT rate). Both forms of indirect subsidies are regulated by law. 

10.9 The national news agency MIA is set-up as a shareholders company (the state is the single shareholder). It provides news and content on commercial basis, and the same rules and prices (for different packages) apply to all clients. On the overcrowded and unsustainable media market, the main issue is that many media, especially online, cannot afford MIA’s services which in the past has led to a widespread practice of “stealing” and “plagiarising” MIA’s services. As of recently, there is anecdotal evidence coming from the management that they are slowly dealing with that problem. 

10.10 Since the removal of the broadcasting fee that was charged on all TV households in 2017, and the move towards funding the public service broadcaster from the state budget (80% of 1% of the total tax revenue for the State Budget for the previous year), the funding of the public broadcasting service MRT has been neither adequate nor independent. (In fact, MRT has suffered from being underappreciated and underfunded for the best part of the 30+ years since the independence in the country). For the past 5 years, it has never received more than 0.57% of the funding it was supposed to receive, due to decisions of the Ministry of Information Society and Administration (which decides on the allocation of MRT’s budget).

10.11 The rules on appointment of steering and management bodies of the public service broadcaster MRT (the Programming Council and the Director General, respectively) were changed in 2018. The Programming Council is appointed by the Parliament, and the vote threshold was raised from absolute (50% of all MPs plus 1) to qualified two-thirds majority. While the idea was to secure greater consensus over the names that would be appointed, assuming that it would open the door for more independent people, unaffiliated with political parties, the effect was that political parties in the parliament now have a chip they can bargain with in the political horse-trading. Combined with the fact that a two-thirds majority is very difficult to secure under the proportional electoral system, the resulting situation is that the old composition of the Programming Council (but also of the Council of AVMU, the audiovisual regulator) have been performing their duties as acting members (their mandates expired in late 2021), and will remain in that position until the new Programming Council is appointed by the parliament. Without legal changes to install a solution that, while less high-minded, will be far more practical in the highly polarized political scene in the country, new appointments are not likely, at least until after the parliamentary elections in the spring of 2024. So far, political parties in the parliament, especially the opposition, have insisted on securing representation of loyal party members in the two bodies. 

Why?

The relevant EU regulation on net neutrality has not yet been transposed into the Law on Electronic Communications of North Macedonia. However, net neutrality is to a certain extent indirectly regulated in a Rulebook adopted by the Agency for Electronic Communications (AEK) in 2015, based on Article 108 of the Law which is related to the obligations of the operators of public communication networks for transparency and publication of information.

The Rulebook adopted by the Agency, in Article 2 (Definitions), defines net neutrality аs “…a principle according to which Internet traffic is treated equally, without discrimination, restrictions or obstacles regardless of (1) the entity that sends and receives data, (2) the type and content of the data, (3) the type of service and application that it's being used.”

Next, Article 4 of the Rulebook stipulates the basic principles of net neutrality: (1) Operators providing Internet access service should take measures to ensure the principle of network neutrality. (2) The operators providing internet access service should not use measures for managing the internet traffic that can block, reduce the flow rate, modify, degrade or discriminate against any content, application or service, except for load protection or network connection overload or due to mitigation of the consequences of the load or network connection overload. These measures for managing the Internet traffic should be an exception and should be transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate to the purpose for which they exist. (3) The operator is obliged to provide its subscribers, upon their request, with information about the possible way to check and monitor the actual and minimum speed, as well as on the conditions for restricting the access to and/or use of services and applications.

Score: 4 out of 8 (50%) = Medium risk 

Why?

Of the 34 media outlets that are part of the "Media Ownership Monitoring" database, nine are run by women-owned companies or companies where women are the majority shareholders. According to the data, a quarter of the media are run by women, with online media taking the lead, where women own six out of the thirteen media included in this base.

The situation is a little better when it comes to women in the position of editor-in-chief. Out of 34 media outlets, 13 media outlets, or 38%, have female editors. When it comes to editorial positions, more than half are women only at radio stations, where, conversely, no women own or have founded such a medium.

With that, this base gave yet another confirmation that women are not sufficiently represented in leadership positions in the country's media. According to the 2020 analysis of the Agency for Audio and Audio Visual Media, which examined media management, the number of women in decision-making positions (in management/director and editorial positions) is lower in all television and radio stations. At the same time, it is pointed out in the analysis that journalism in television and radio stations is a field in which women are "traditionally" more numerous. 

There is no specific data regarding the gender discrepancy in salaries among the media. However, the general data from the State Statistics Office show that men earn higher salaries than women in this country.

Regarding the challenges faced by women journalists, last year's research by the organisation PINA provides a good example. Based on surveys conducted with 103 female journalists, the research showed that a quarter of them received threats of physical violence, 19.5% received threats to their lives, while over 81% of female journalists faced harassment on the Internet because of their work.

Result: High Risk