MCIC and JAM

Diversities in the informing at the presidential elections
 

Within the project "Pages for mutual understanding", organized by the MCIC and the Journalists' Association of Macedonia and financially supported by the European Agency for Reconstruction (EAR), a tribune called "Diversities in informing at the presidential elections" took place on 8 June at the Parliamentary Club in Skopje. The tribune was aimed for the media representatives and five daily newspapers have been evaluated - Dnevnik, Utrinski Vesnik, Vecer, Fakti and Lobi. The problem regarding the media informing at the last presidential elections was openly discussed.

Saso Ordanovski, Editor-in-Chief of Forum, who was one of the facilitators at the tribune, raised the question of transparency at the presidential campaigns: "Let us see where the President's children go to school, whether they go to a public (state) or a private school. If they go to a private school, doesn't that mean that there is a lack of trust in state institutions? Do we not the contents of the President's private library, or what their parents do? We know very little about all these things. We are pleased with what we learn from the parties' press-conferences, and we do not react to the statements like there has been a forgery at a certain election post, not to mention that we never go there to do some research on that".

"For the first time in independent Macedonia there has not been a division between pro-government and pro-opposition newspapers during the presidential campaign. All candidates have been given an equal treatment in the media. Besides the DPA candidate who played on the card of the radicalism, the other parties and their candidates did not deal much with the interethnic frustrations. There have been two serious candidates for a president and two other to fill the gap. Anyway, if we take a deeper look, we will see that there has been only one candidate", said Daut Dauti, Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper in Albanian, Flaka.

MIA Director and Chief Executive, Zoran Ivanov, said: "The voters can no longer be manipulated by the media or the NGO. They no longer react to our calls to go out on the elections, they are now less dependent on the politics and the politicians. Although the NGO and we called them to vote, there has been only just 51% of them who did that".

The tribune was attended by representatives from almost all larger printed media in Macedonia.

 

D.M.