The Media Pluralism Monitor is a unique tool applied for assessing risk levels for media pluralism in EU member states and selected candidate countries. Since 2013, the project is financed by the European Commission and coordinated by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. The Institute for Development and International Relations has been participating in project implementation since 2015, led by Dr Paško Bilić.
Risk assessments are based on legal, political and economic variables to determine the level of pluralism in European media systems. In 2021, the project was implemented in 32 countries with risk assessments relating to 2020 in four domains: fundamental protection, market plurality, political independence and social inclusiveness.
The results for Croatia show a medium risk in the area of fundamental protection (41%), political independence (61%) and social inclusiveness (61%) as well as high risk in the area of market plurality (71%).
The results for fundamental protection (41%) reflect problems in protecting the journalistic profession and standards, primarily due to a high number of lawsuits directed at journalists or so-called SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) lawsuits.
The area of political independence (61%) reflects poor independence performance of the public service media and the overall lack of editorial autonomy of the media. Self-regulation of editorial autonomy is highly inefficient.
Social inclusiveness (61%) is poorly promoted in areas such as gender equality, access to media and management functions for women, representation of minorities in the media and the development of a comprehensive media literacy policy.
Poor market plurality (71%) is reflected in online platform concentration, news media concentration and commercial influence over editorial content. Market competition for digital media is not protected in the field of horizontal and cross-media concentration.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a decrease of advertising investments in all media as well as in worsening of the working conditions of journalists.
The full report for Croatia is available here: PDF1
The full report for all countries is available here: PDF2
The executive summary for all countries is available here: https://cmpf.eui.eu/mpm2021-executive-summary/
