Over the years, the Macedonian authorities have grown fairly familiar with methods of financial “support” for media outlets, using funds allocated from the national budget. The results of this obvious misuse have been even more evident in the media market in recent years.
Using the state budget funds, the government fosters the sustainability as well as the rise of many media outlets at the national and regional levels, creating unfair competition and distorting the media market. In this way, a wide network of supportive media outlets is created, through which the media space is captured in order to spread political propaganda.
Many media, especially commercial TV channels with national coverage, are beneficiaries of the state advertising funds. The distribution of these funds cannot be explained by any economic logic, except that they are financial infusion for the eligible media. Additionally, the government subsidizes the five national commercial TV channels at up to 50 percent of total production costs for production of domestic film and documentary programmes. In 2014, the national TV stations received subsidies of around 530,000 euros.
The model of financing the public service, which was developed in the past two decades under strong influence by the rolling structures, contributed to the breaking down of institutional autonomy and direct financial dependence on the state budget. MRT is grown in a medium of the system of government that often compartmentalized state interests before public, rather thanserves the publicinterest.
This is only part of the content of the research on state-media financial relations in Macedonia, conducted by the Macedonian institute for media, within the project “SEE Media Observatory”.
The full report, together with conclusions and recommendation, is attached below:
