The Media Reforms Observatory project aims at contributing to the achievement of the urgent reform priorities (URP), as a condition for the RM to join the EU, through identifying and removing the obstacles for the democratic development of the media sector. Additionally, the project will pay attention to the following short-term objectives:
- Ensure regular public insight into the fulfillment of the URP in the field of media in the four pillars – public service reform, access to public information, insult and defamation and government advertising – through monitoring, analysis and advocacy;
- Strengthening public awareness regarding the URP and challenges in the area of media;
- Creating opportunities for an informative public debate between the decision-makers, non-governmental organizations and media;
The project will inform the citizens about the urgent reform priorities implementation process in a comprehensible manner, adjusted to a non-expert audience, to make the citizens come to the realization why the reform priorities are so important and how implementation thereof will contribute to enhancing their life. At the same time, the project will provide the citizens and civil society organizations with opportunities for contributing to the public debate, through creating mechanisms and channels for their connection with the media and decision-makers.
Given the fact that in the first part of the project (1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018) most of the reform efforts initiated have not been finalized, there is a need to continue with activities that will accelerate the process of meeting the reform priorities.
The project activities will be implemented between 1 November 2019 and 30 October 2020.
For increased visibility and transparency of the project, as well as for wider public communication, media support has been provided by Meta News Agency, the portal for enhancing accountability – Truthmeter, and the Albanian-language portal Portalb.
During 2017-2018 the project was implemented in partnership with Agora – Center for Civil Values Promotion and Investigative Journalism Platform (PINA).
Financial support for the Media Reform Observatory is provided by the Foundation Open Society- Macedonia.
