The government with its entire capacity will commit to eliminating cases of pressure being exerted on journalists and media outlets, which were noted in the document, government spokesman Dushko Arsovski said Wednesday when asked about the government’s position on the 2021 World Press Freedom Index released on Tuesday by Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Remarks will be taken seriously into consideration, he said stressing that it was crucial that the report noted an improvement in press freedom since 2017.
Conveying the government’s position, Arsovski called an all social stakeholders to engage in further efforts to improve the situation and contribute to the upward trend the country had been registering as regards press freedom.
The government, he added, reacted to cases when several office holders had inappropriate communication with reporters and had taken adequate measures against them. Some of them were dismissed.
“We encourage journalists to report to the police. We also encourage the prosecution and courts to complete processing the cases. The government will keep reacting to threats against media workers,” Arsovski told a weekly news conference.
North Macedonia advances from 92nd to 90th place in the World Press Freedom Index, whereas it is ranked worse than Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo and better than Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria.
“2020 was an extraordinary year for North Macedonia. Parliament was dissolved, a provisional government took over and then snap parliamentary elections had to be postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting state of emergency. The situation of the media worsened, senior government officials continued to threaten and insult media outlets, while cyber-harassment and verbal attacks against journalists increased on social media. All this served to reinforce the well-entrenched culture of impunity,” said the RSF report.
