Macedonia's Press Freedom Ranked Worst in Balkans

The new World Press Freedom Index, surveying the state of media freedom in 2014, has ranked Macedonia at the bottom of the Balkan pile in 117th position out of 180 listed countries.

This is a slight improvement from the previous year when Macedonia was ranked in 123rd place.

"The situation of Macedonia's media continued to be bad in 2014, a year marked by the misuse of defamation legislation and politically-motivated allocation of state advertising", the report said.

The authors of the report, Reporters Without Borders, mention that the investigative journalist Tomislav Kezarovski remained under house arrest after being sentenced in October 2013 to four-and-a-half years in prison for revealing the identity of a protected witness.

The report also mentions the fact that in June, police forced several reporters to delete photos and videos of a protest they were covering.

Macedonia is the only Balkan country designated "red", the colour used for the worst-performing countries in terms of media freedom. All other countries in the region are marked "yellow", designating "problematic" areas.

Montenegro is ranked in 114th position, the same as in the previous year's report. The index mentions the January 2014 attack on Lidija Nikcevic, a journalist with the daily newspaper Dan, for which five people were later jailed.

EU member state Bulgaria is in 104th place in the report. "The Financial Oversight Commission, a government agency, has in practice been turned into a media cop. Imposing fines and ordering journalists to reveal their sources, it clearly betrays a government desire to silence media that dare to point out problems in banks and the regulatory system," the report says about Bulgaria.