Skopje, 28 September 2017 – Yesterday, the Agency held its Third Public Meeting in 2017. Agency Director Zoran Trajchevski presented the activities the Agency had carried out in the past quarter, such as supervisions over the broadcasters, the operators of public electronic communication networks and the print media publishers; the measures it had imposed; the analyses prepared; activities in the field of international cooperation, and the activities related to monitoring media coverage of the local elections. Also presented at the meeting was the Agency’s new website, upgraded with additional features. These new features will significantly facilitate access to information for persons with total or partial vision impairments and colour blindness. The new software used makes it possible for persons with total loss of vision to hear the entire contents of the website by pressing certain buttons on the keyboard – and this, in the Macedonian, English and Albanian languages. At the same time, persons with partial vision loss have an option to zoom in the contents, while the colour-blind users can use the option with black-and-white contrast and colours that they can see.
Those present at the meeting also had an opportunity to hear the results of the Analysis of the Market of Audio and Audiovisual Media Services in 2016, prepared by the Agency, which presented data about the number of broadcasters and their economic operations in 2016, as well as data about the television stations’ viewership and radios’ listenership.
In the context of the 2017 Local Elections, the media representatives were reminded again about the rules for media coverage of the forthcoming elections that apply during election campaigns and election silence – the obligation to report in a fair, balanced and unbiased manner; the rules to publish public opinion poll results related to the participants in the electoral process; the rules for paid political advertising, etc. It was also pointed out to them that they should be particularly vigilant when it comes to observing the professional principles with regard to the use of “hate speech”, i.e. that they should not be the source of “hate speech”.