Initiating effective debate in media landscape in Macedonia- main expectation from the Media observatory’ project.

A corpus of research findings and analyses that could provide solid arguments for the media organizations to push for substantial changes in the media sphere, but also setting a ground for opening vibrant debate, are some of the expectations from the project “South East European Media Observatory - Building Capacities and Coalitions for Monitoring Media Integrity and Advancing Media Reforms”, expressed by the participants at the consultative meeting held in Skopje, Macedonia, on April 25th 2013. The national project coordinator, Biljana Petkovska and the project’ researcher, Snezana Trpevska presented the main activities and the research methodology to the representatives of media organizations and institutions with competences in the media sphere in Macedonia.

The group of stakeholders was represented by Naser Selmani, the president of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, Tamara Causidis and Dragan Antonovski, the president and the vice-president of the Independent Union of Journalists and Media Workers, Roberto Belicanec and Gazmend Ajdini, the president and the director of the Media Development Centar, Mirce Adamcevski, the president of the Managing Board of MIM and Saso Ordanovski, representative of the Forum of editors within AJM. The international organizations were represented by Konstantin Jovanovski from the EU Delegation in Macedonia and Mihailo Lahtov from OSCE Mission to Skopje, while Metodija Janceski attended the meeting as a member of the Broadcasting Council of Macedonia.

“The expectation from the project is to make a ground for more frontal and influential debate that should be initiated by the agents of change, most of which are present on this meeting. The project has great capacity and offers wide opportunities for the national agents”, as Konstantin Jovanovski from the Delegation of EU in Skopje stressed.

Naser Selmani from AJM said he was glad the project recognized a set of indicators that influence the media situation in the country, something for what only the journalists were blamed few years ago. “This project will provide data that will enable me to be more convincing when I step out and debate in the public”, added Selmani.

Roberto Belicanec is seeing this project as check-and-balances mechanism that will support media community to push for changes and incorporate the values into the system. Saso Ordanovski encouraged the researchers to make contemporary frame in order to address the changing concepts of public, privacy, markets and advertising. The importance of the institutional support for the project in a sense of being more cooperative in providing access to information, resources, advice or suggestions, but also in a sense of being open for dialogue with the civil society, was emphasized in the discussion by Biljana Petkovska and Snezana Trpevska.

All the participants at the meeting recognized the potential of the project to influence the media reforms in Macedonia, but also stressed the importance that Macedonia is joining this initiative that should further the media development in the region. They also pointed other projects they run that could be complementary to the activities envisioned in the Media observatory.