ARTICLE 19 and European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), as part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), are concerned by a financial investigation launched by the Serbian authorities into journalists, media and civil society organisations. The Serbian Finance Ministry’s Money Laundering Prevention Department has drawn up a list of media, journalists and NGOs whose bank records it wants to check. The information about this list was published in the Serbian media on 27 July.

Amidst the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Spain’s far-right party, Vox  introduced a bill to Parliament which aims to regulate fact-checking news outlets in Spain. The text, published on July 17, explicitly forbids the verification of any statement on “social media, blogs, generic websites, print, online outlets and broadcasters“ unless the media organization publicly states its affiliation, if any, to a political party, government or ideology.

The bill also prohibits the fact-checking of “opinions” and includes a provision by which fact-checkers can be held legally liable for labelling them as ‘fake news’. Here MFRR partner, International Press Institute explores what this means for media freedom across the country

Tanja Milevska received verbal abuse, death and rape threats on social media networks after she tweeted on 11 July asking whether Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament recognise the constitutional change of 2019 making “North Macedonia” the country’s official name.

Following the tweets, trolls and active political figures have been fueling threats for the past four days in an attempt to discredit the journalist in the context of parliamentary election to be held on Wednesday 15 July.

The International Press Institute (IPI) has joined a letter from the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) to the Greek government calling for greater transparency and objectivity in the distribution of public advertisement funds to media.

A recent analysis has shown that ad revenue from a public health advertising campaign related to Covid-19 was not distributed fairly, with media perceived as critical of the government receiving disproportionately less revenue or excluded from the scheme altogether.

The letter criticizes the opaque ad distribution carried out by a private company and calls on the Greek government to provide full clarification on the exact criteria to use to select which media received state support and which amounts.

In a letter to Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša and Culture Minister Vasko Simonit, the MFRR partners said the package of three media laws had the “potential to financially weaken the public broadcaster and allow far greater government control over the management of public service media”.

The letter calls on Slovenia to “apply to brakes” to the proposed changes, at the very least pending extensive further consultation and substantial revisions. “It is clear that major changes to these proposals are needed to safeguard the independence and public-interest reporting of public service media in Slovenia”, the letter concludes.

For two consecutive nights, public protests have erupted across Serbia, in response to the Government’s lockdown and COVID-19 policies. At these protests, journalists and media workers have faced a number of threats and attacks from individual protesters and police officers.

The MFRR are extremely concerned by violence against journalists during these protests. In two days, we have been informed of at least 14 attacks against journalists and media workers who were on the field to report in the public interest