AVMU’s Fourth Public Meeting Focuses on Addressing Hate Speech
Skopje, 21 December 2023 – Today, the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services today held the last public meeting for this year. At the event, AVMU Director Zoran Trajchevski presented an overview of the activities carried out in accordance with the Annual Work Programme for the past three months.
Those attending had an opportunity to hear about the activities related to the supervisions conducted over radio broadcasters, operators of public electronic communication networks, print media publishers, providers of on-demand AVM services, to the imposed public warning measures and the activities in the field of international cooperation.
At the request of the national terrestrial television channels of Kanal 5 TV and Telma TV, a debate was opened at the meeting on addressing hate speech in the media and the online sphere. Several stakeholders in the media field shared their opinions and standpoints, and the general conclusion was that work was needed to prevent hate speech, which is present in all spheres of social life, including in the media, particularly internet portals, video sharing platforms and services such as YouTube and other platforms where content is created without editorial responsibility or filtering of the published content.
All attendees agreed that the commitment to preventing such actions should continue, while the institutions should establish a system for timely response to all cases where content involving hate speech is noticed in the internet sphere.
Also shared at the meeting were the conclusions of the latest meeting of the Network for Combating Hate Speech in the Media, of which the Agency is a member. Among other things, it was agreed to sign the Network’s Memorandum at the beginning of 2024, which would operationalize the activities in the forthcoming period, in order to make use of the period before preceding the electoral process, when inflammatory speech is most often spotted in the media and the social networks. The Government’s Secretariat had announced that the activities of the Network had been included in the new Strategy covering the period 2024-2028, and that it envisaged financial resources that could be used to support the Network’s activities.
The presentation is available at the following link:
Activities conducted in line with the AAAVMS’ Annual Work Programme
- Zoran Trajchevski, PhD, Director of the AAAVMS
The Agenda of the Public Meeting of the Agency can be downloaded here
The Registration Form for participation in the Public Meeting of the Agency can be downloaded here