Skopje, 15 March 2024 – Today, the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services published the Monitoring Report on the media presentation related to the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, covering the 15 February – 7 March 2024 period.
The monitoring covered nine national television programming services: MRT1, MRT2, Alsat-M TV, Alfa TV, Kanal 5 TV, Sitel TV, Telma TV, 21-M TV and 24 Vesti TV. The Report analyzes the news items aired in the central editions of their newscasts/TV journals, related to pre-election topics and domestic current affairs socio-political developments, as well as the other types of shows within this thematic scope.
The findings of the monitoring found no violations of the provisions of the Electoral Code during this period.
The programming services contained scarce journalistic informative items in the context of party pre-electoral promises, yet quite frequent accentuated critical items about the existing, current socio-political consequences of the insufficiently thought-through, poorly managed policies of the previous government and certain structural parts of the transitional government.
The monitoring noted varying degrees of journalistic critical maturity in the attitude towards the “pseudo-events” which the parties and certain incumbents of the transitional government organized as an active form of self-promotion during the pre-electoral period. All newsrooms, without any exception, showed interest predominantly in the topics related to the administrative labyrinths of the procedure for replacing the personal identification documents, the cascading responsibility for the systemic negligence towards the patients with rare and/or grave diseases, and the offensive rhetoric and lack of political culture in the communication between the former incumbents and the media workers.
The only outlets to provide reporting appropriate for people with sensory disabilities were the MRT 1 and 24 Vesti TV
The Monitoring Report on the media presentation during the 15 February – 7 March 2024 period is available at this link .