The majority of citizens have no answer about where they should file a report if they notice that some of the media is spreading hate speech which represents a felony that is sanctioned with a fine and imprisonment from 1 to 5 years show the polls that were carried out by the Research Center IPSOS Macedonia supported by the Conrad Adenauer Foundation and the Association of the Journalists of Macedonia, write “Portalb.mk”.
The research was carried out in September this year over 1.033 respondents.
According to the polls, 46.2% of the citizens didn’t give any reply to the question about where they should report if they notice a hate speech in the media, 9.2 % have said that they would have filed a complaint at the Agency of Audio and Audi-Visual service, 8.5% at the AJN’s Honor Council, 8.4% at the commission for discrimination protection, 6.7% at the Commission for free access to information of public character, 6.2% at the ombudsman, 5.2% at the Council of Media Ethics and 2.9% at the Public Prosecution.
Previously, the Helsinki Committee gave a statement for “Portalb.mk” where it stated that the citizens know very little and rarely recognize hate speech because the legal framework is not precise. They demand that the government should carry out a campaign in order to educate the general public about hate speech.
On the other hand, the government of Macedonia with the use of its national strategy for the development of the concept “One society and the interculturalism in Macedonia” will be fighting against hate speech, and are announcing new criminal charges to MoI for persons that have spread hate speech through social networks or otherwise.
The strategy will be done in a period of 6 months as a document and according to the authorities, it is very important because of the division in the society on various bases.
