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

In recent weeks, yet more disturbing revelations of state corruption and impunity related to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia continue to emerge, underscoring the weaknesses in Malta’s rule of law, and entrenched impunity for both the murder of Caruana Galizia and the high-level abuses of power she investigated.

On the 1,000th day since her assassination we call for justice, transparency and accountability

The International Press Institute (IPI) called on the chief prosecutor in Bulgaria to ensure a transparent investigation is conducted into recent death threats against investigative journalist Nikolay Staykov.

Staykov, a well-known Bulgarian journalist who co-founded the NGO Anti-Corruption Fund, told IPI he began received threatening phone calls on June 18 as part of a “coordinated” campaign of harassment he believes was linked to an ongoing investigative documentary he had produced about alleged state corruption.

The MFRR is also concerned by TVP’s role in amplifying the government’s discriminatory rhetoric against minority groups throughout the Presidential campaign. Government media have a duty to be balanced and impartial in their election reporting and not to discriminate against any political party or candidate in granting access to airtime. TVP should respect this in the second round of voting on 12 July 2020.

Since 2015, Gazeta Wyborcza has received over 55 legal threats, including civil defamation actions and alleged infringement of personal interests by a number of actors including Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of the governing Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) party; the state television broadcaster, Telewizja Polska SA and state owned company KGHM Polska Miedź SA.

We call on the pursuers to stop the legal threats, which fit the definition of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and are aimed at stifling legitimate criticism and independent journalism.

As part of MFRR we have contributed €15,000 to support the outlet’s legal defence