The Future of the Media in the Western Balkans and Turkey: Facts and Trends

In an attempt to inform debate on the future of the media and democracy in the Western Balkans and Turkey, we have developed a map of key indicators, collected data, and provided analyses on journalism, media, and democracy in seven countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. As decidedly as ever, we conclude that the media in the region are in a state of systemic, perpetual crisis, manifested in how they are defined, regulated, owned, financed, and managed. The state of crisis is reflected in the capacities of professional journalists and journalism to produce public interest content, and in how citizens relate to the media. The crisis is deeply entrenched in the fabric of our media and political systems and marked by the privatization of public communication and lack of strategic commitment to the public interest on the side of political and economic power.

The results of the research conducted in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey suggest that the key determinants for the future of our media and democracies are the following:

• The poor socio-economic status of journalists and their exposure to pressure and attacks, coupled with modest support mechanisms, cripple the ability of journalists to promote the public interest, report on key issues of public interest, and hold power to account. In the most extreme cases, the pressure involves imprisonment, interrogation, surveillance, and lawsuits aimed at silencing journalists.
• The lack of consistent monitoring and registration of cases of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) in the region, with dozens of lawsuits against journalists filed by political officials and their affiliates.
• A growing number or media outlets, but a declining number of journalism students, highlighting concerns about the future shrinking of staff numbers in media newsrooms and about the growing automatization of journalist work. The most drastic drop was in North Macedonia, with the number of journalism students in 2023 amounting to only 11% of the number from ten years ago and 50% of the number from 2000.
• The number of media outlets is growing, mostly in the online sector, while print media outlets are becoming increasingly endemic.
• A worrying trend of overt concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few media conglomerates, often tied to national or foreign governments, that takes a toll on media freedom and pluralism.
• The dominant instrumentalization (through ownership and funding) of media (including private and public) for particular political and/or business interests limits the space for editorial independence and integrity.
• Non-profit media are still a rarity in the region, with only a few non-profit radio broadcasters in some countries, and an unknown number of online platforms of civil society organizations with some community-focused mission.
• Lack of transparency of media sector, particularly the lack of accessible and reliable information concerning the media industry and media market.
• Advertising is a main source of revenues in the media sector, with total revenues ranging between EUR 12 million in Montenegro and over EUR 4 billion in Turkey.
• The TV sector still acquires the highest, although declining, share of total advertising revenues, while social media’s share is increasing, and in Turkey it amounts to as much as 45.7%.
• The tech giants such as Google and Meta are an increasingly dominant competitor for media outlets in the region, jeopardizing the future sustainability of national and local media outlets and potentially curbing political pluralism in public communication.
• Public funding for the media, including funding of public broadcasters (declining in four out of seven countries), grants, and subsidies for media outlets and government advertising, amounts to several to dozens of millions of euros per country, taking up an important share of media revenues, but without proactive transparency, effective guarantees of editorial independence, well-defined purpose, and evaluation, the opportunities to make public funding for the media an important instrument of media democratization remain under-used.
• The representation of different age, gender, ethnic, religious, and other groups in media content and in newsroom staff is limited. In multiethnic communities, some policies promote ethnic diversity of media content, while other identity axes are largely neglected and pluralism in public communication is very limited. Women are an important, and in many countries even dominant, workforce in media, but remain underrepresented in managerial posts.
• Mechanisms for complaints concerning media content exist, and the number of complaints to the self-regulatory bodies on the national levels has been growing over the past three years. However, the mechanisms for participation of citizens in the work of media outlets, in the form of complaints, suggestions, providing support, etc., remain underused and limited mainly to user comments under the published content.
• TV remains the main source of information across the region, although its use is slightly declining, while in Turkey, online news media platforms and social media have already taken over the leading role and now are the most used sources of news.
• The trust in media is relatively low, ranging between 15% of citizens (in BiH) and 53% of citizens (in Albania) who trust media to some extent. A decline in trust in the media, particularly evident in Turkey and Serbia, possibly reflects both the growing awareness of interference in media editorial policies and the increasing scepticism towards all institutions and the democratic system as a whole, registered on the global level.
• Growing use of social media, accompanied by the lack of media literacy and lack of citizen trust in the media and other institutions, is likely to have devastating consequences on the capacities of citizens to access relevant and reliable information, to engage in communication, and to participate in democratic processes.
• The region is still facing polarizing rhetoric, political instability, high corruption, and authoritarian tendencies of the ruling parties. Recent indications of progress in some areas of democratic functioning in some parts of the region, such as certain advancements in the institutional fight against corruption, speak of some, albeit limited, potentials.
• Voter turnout in the region is relatively low, amounting to between 46% and 59% at the last parliamentary elections in six countries of the region, and it has been declining in four out of seven countries over the past three years. By contrast, Turkey has traditionally had a high voter turnout for decades, reaching 87% in the last parliamentary elections. The growing use of social networks for accessing information is associated with the potentials for higher mobilization of voters, due to higher reach of online campaigns and the exposure of users to increasingly one-sided information.

Solving isolated issues of the media crisis cannot reverse the effects of decades of privatization of public communication and cannot assure a better future of our media and our democracies. In our research we show that all elements of the crisis have an impact on each other and on our future. We are in need of all-encompassing reforms, radically centred on the public interest, involving democratization of both the media and the political system.

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The regional program “Our Media: A civil society action to generate media literacy and activism, counter polarisation and promote dialogue” is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by partner organizations SEENPM, Albanian Media Institute, Mediacentar Sarajevo, Press Council of Kosovo, Montenegrin Media Institute, Macedonian Institute for Media, Novi Sad School of Journalism, Peace Institute and Bianet.

This article was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of SEENPM and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.