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Corruption is, arguably, a journalist’s toughest, most dangerous beat. War zones are dangerous and corruption is a war zone. Another journalist has been shot after reporting on corrupt officials.
Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti reporter Olivera Lakic; was Tuesday night (May 8) in front of her residence in Podgorica, the capital. She was shot, apparently, by a person waiting in front of the building. Two others were seen fleeing. Her wounds, according to the local hospital, are not life-threatening. Police authorities promised to find the perpetrators.
Ms Lakic has been writing in recent months about cigarette smuggling. Her reports linked the corruption to police officers and national security agents. She had been threatened before and physically attacked, in the same place, six years ago.
"How long will this happen in our wonderful Montenegro?” wrote Vijesti chief editor Mihailo Jovovic (May 9). “No attack on us have been resolved. Many of the stories that have been written, which point to the crime, have not been investigated at all. We are struck by such cowards. You can kill us all. Somebody will be responsible for this one day.”
Vijesti is a daily newspaper, co-owned by several employees and Austrian media house Styria Media Group. Since 2007 the newspaper or its employees have been attacked 25 times, noted Vijesti director and contributing author to Index on Censorship Zeljko Ivanovic to Austrian daily Die Presse (May 9). “Montenegro is a mafia state. And (recently elected President Milo) Djukanovic is its patron.”
Editorially, Vijesti has been critical of Mr. Djukanovic for more than a decade, through his time as the country’s prime minister. He was elected president in April. During the election campaign he accused Vijesti of “spreading fascist ideas.”
Election advertising practices of social media giant Facebook moved a notch this week. This comes as no surprise as the company has adopted a “whack-a-mole” strategy toward every little controversy. And there are many.
“As part of our efforts to help protect the integrity of elections and referendums from undue influence, we will begin rejecting ads related to the (May 25th Eighth Amendment) referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland,” said a company statement, quoted by independent.ie (May 9). Voters will decide whether or not to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which bans abortion in most cases. Earlier, Twitter said it would not allow ads relating to the referendum. (See more about elections and media here)
There are, obviously, limitations. "We do not intend to block campaigns and advocacy organisations in Ireland from using service providers outside of Ireland,” said the Facebook statement. The company also said it will not be able to process reports from the public on potentially dodgy ads because an automated system is not in place so reports from “established campaign groups” will have to suffice.
UPDATE: Google and its social video subsidiary YouTube followed by banning all referendum ads through May 25th. It is a step significantly beyond that of Facebook and Twitter. ”Following our update around election integrity efforts globally, we have decided to pause all ads related to the Irish referendum on the Eighth Amendment,” said the Google statement, quoted by Irish public broadcaster RTE News (May 9).
Google’s decision was not well received by anti-abortion campaigners, who called it “an attempt to rig the referendum,” in a statement, quoted by Irish Times (May 9). How the social media giants are responding to the “election integrity” issue around the Irish referendum campaign is very likely a precursor to broader policies for election campaigns around the world.
Completely unrelated, Google announced a €150 million expansion to its Dublin data center, creating 400 jobs over the next 16 months. Since 2003 Google has invested €1 billion in Irish capital projects.
Through much of this century the working journalist has, generally, become a profession in decline. “I’ve stopped counting,” said a director of a prominent European journalists’ union ten years ago. The reasons are many, complex and oft discussed; from economic and political distress to the allure of public relations and reliable pay.
The European Commission’s number cruncher EuroStat captured a dataset on the number of journalists, roughly defined, in 18 European countries for 2017, released coinciding with World Press Freedom Day, The counted about 400,000 active journalists, up about 10% from 2012. That’s 0.2% of total employed persons.
Country-by-country, some have more gainfully employed journalists than others. Estonia and Sweden have the most, 0.5% of total employment. In Finland, the Netherlands and Germany active journalists make up 0.3% of all workers.
On the other end of the table are the Visegrad Four. Journalists in Slovakia and Poland make up the smallest percentage of the workforce, 0.1%. Czech Republic and Hungary under 0.2%.
Released just prior to World Press Freedom Day was the 2018 Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) Press Freedom Index. Estonia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Germany ranked in the top 15 globally. By contrast rankings for the Visegrad Four - Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - all declined. (See Visegrad Four - RSF Press Freedom rankings chart here - in Resources)
“Not only is our economic base broken but so is the whole media landscape,” said former deputy chief editor at now closed Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag Marton Gergely at a Vienna conference last weekend on the media environment in Hungary and Slovakia organized by RSF Austria, quoted by Der Standard (May 7). “Since the number one critical newspaper was eliminated everything changed for the worse. We journalists need to think what we did wrong.”
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