A workshop was held on: “New Trends of Hate Speech in Media and Plagiarism in Journalism”

The Association of Journalists of Macedonia from 24th to 26th of August, in Ohrid, organized a two-day workshop on “New Trends of Hate Speech in Media and Plagiarism in Journalism”.

Participants of this workshop were journalists, editors and lawyers, while the President of SSNM Tamara Causidis and Erdem Ahmet, member of the Commission for complains in the Council of Media Ethics in Macedonia, were trainers on the workshop.

One of the main topics of the workshop was the topic of copyright, how to protect them, and how to respect other people’s copyrights. After that, there was a discussion on hate speech in the Macedonian society with emphasis on the media and social networks, and the professional ethics in journalism was also discussed.

Cases from the European Court of Human Rights were presented to the participants, as well as from domestic courts for subjects related to the topics that were covered on the workshop.

The main conclusion from the training was that although the Criminal Code regulates hate speech, so far, there are no cases related to hate speech in Macedonian courts. On the contrary, the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, the Council of Honor at the AJM and the Council of Media Ethics in Macedonia have reacted on several occasions to the presence of hate speech in the media.

This workshop was organized within the project: “Journalists’ Network for Media Freedom in Macedonia”, funded by the EU.