Skopje, 3 May 2021– Under the United Nations’ auspices, today’s date has been celebrated the World Press Freedom Day. The theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day – Information as a Public Good – aims to affirm the importance of this issue and to underline the need for strengthening journalism.
This year, three sub-themes have been highlighted as key topics: ensuring the economic viability of the news media, creating mechanisms for ensuring transparency of Internet companies, and enhancing media and information literacy capacities that enable people to recognize, value and defend journalism as a vital part of information as a public good. The current COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the economic performance of news media and media pluralism, and has contributed to the emergence of a global “infodemic”. Due to this, it is necessary, now more than ever, to preserve media independence and promote fact-based reporting, which is crucial to the public good globally. At the same time, today’s date, 3 May, acts as a reminder to the governments that they must fulfill their commitments to protect the independence of the media from attacks, respect the fundamental principles of media freedom and the right to freedom of expression contained in the European Human Rights Convention, which our state has also undertaken to respect.