Monika Taleska is a longtime journalist, who with her experience and professionalism gives her maximum to journalism, both at the local and central level. Currently, she is a public relations advisor in the Municipality of Prilep and in a conversation with CIVIL Media, she spoke from both of the positions on media freedom, on the challenges they face, as well as on the needs for improving the situation with the media in Macedonia.
CIVIL Media: What does freedom of expression and media freedom mean to you?
Taleska: Every citizen should have the right to freely express their opinion, views, to define them and to manifest them everywhere, of course within a framework that implies civilized behavior. In this context, media freedom is especially important. The media are actually creators of public opinion. The production of news based on the principles of journalism, which means accurate, true and balanced informing, is the foundation of what objective journalism and creating public opinion according to these principles actually mean. Otherwise, we are faced with a spin construction, creating a false image of reality, while the truth is something else.
In these 12 years of Macedonia, the Macedonian citizens, the Macedonian journalism were both prisoners of an image of an objective reality. The greater part of the media were servants to the government. Many journalists withdrew from the journalistic principles, with a large part of them also from the postulates of a civil society. Thus, they became servants and a service to the regime, whereas the media played a significant role in maintaining an undemocratic government.
The citizens were captured, the institutions as well, but with the arrival of the new government, a process of returning the media on a good path can be noticed. Indeed, this process is going slowly and with difficulty, but when we talk about the national media, we can say that they are returning to basic journalism.
If I project this in a local framework, one cannot say for sure. In Prilep there are not so many journalists who are able to open up to the processes…We have one-sided informing, unfortunately, the situation is still as such…Some of the local televisions or newspapers still base their information on spins and misinformation. But, as the old saying goes, the truth is thin, but it never breaks…
CIVIL Media: Have you faced pressures from business or political centers of power and how did you deal with them?
Taleska: It may sound positional, as if I were a supporter of a political party, even though I am not, but I think that it conflicts with ethics, morality and the code of a journalist. Currently I am engaged as a public relations advisor in the Municipality of Prilep, and I can speak both from this position and also from the position of a journalist.
In the 12-year regime, perhaps not in the first few years, but after that there was such strong pressure on one of the local media that the government completely shut down and closed. I can say that I have been a witness to a process of a local media being destroyed and ruined, one that incorporated a television station, radio and newspaper. With this, the voice of the media was cut like a knife. This media that had a tradition of 50 years, put them in a position of not being able to receive objective information.
I personally was exposed to pressures and threats with the previous government, even personal threats from the previous mayor, Marjan Risteski, with inappropriate vocabulary, with very primitive behavior. Why? Because it was exactly at the PivoFest festival that I, as correspondent of TV Telma, wanted to report on the reconstruction of the mosque in Prilep as a cultural monument. The request for an opinion at any time is the right of the media and of the journalist. The representatives of the institutions, especially those of the local self-government or the mayor of any provenance can never interfere in the work of the media.
During that time, I was also exposed to other pressures, threats, I was shoved, the equipment, camera, microphone were thrown…they damaged my car several times…You go to a press-conference, you raise questions and you are always degraded for demanding the truth.
The message that I want to send as an advisor for public relations, as what I have said so far was as a journalist, and the Prilep journalists know this although some of them do make spins, is that they can get information about everything that is in the interest of the citizens at any time. Luckily we have a mayor that has a democratic habitus, despite the fact that some of the media spin, misinform or do not inform at all about the work of the local government, he truly has the virtue to invite and talk with them and to present the truth…
CIVIL Media: What is needed in order to preserve and defend media freedom?
Taleska: There is a law. According to me, there has to be awareness among the citizens that they are being manipulated. By following the news on two or three media outlets, every citizen will, of course, be able to arrive to objective information, regardless of how much that person has education in journalism. However, the essence of this question lies in the nature of the journalist. How much a journalist as a person is dedicated and is a reflection of what civic responsibility means. How much that person as a journalist respects the laws, the codex of journalism, how much that person is aware that he must be responsible before himself, that he needs to present the truth, the facts, and not be someone’s servant.
Every journalist is a person and every person has weaknesses. However, how much one will succumb to the pressures or will exchange his professional or human dignity for certain interests, is, nevertheless, a personal choice.
Biljana Jordanovska
Camera: Dehran Muratov
This project is financed by the European Union through the small grants program “Protecting Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression in the Western Balkans”, implemented by the Croatian Journalists Association, as part of the regional project “Western Balkan’s Regional Platform for Advocating Media Freedom and Journalists’ Safety”, implemented through a partnership of six regional journalist associations – Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, Association of Bosnia-Herzegovina Journalists, Croatian Journalists’ Association, Association of Journalists of Kosovo, Association of Journalists of Macedonia and the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro.
