A recent defamation decision by the Court of Appeal in North Macedonia against the Investigative Reporting Lab (IRL) is a worrying development for media freedom in the country which should be overturned on further appeal, the IPI and organizations of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) said today.

At a public hearing before the Court of Appeal in Skopje on 26 February, the court ruled against IRL’s appeal and upheld the defamation verdict previously handed down to the media outlet and its editor-in-chief Saška Cvetkovska. IRL is an independent and non-profit investigative media platform and a local partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The civil defamation lawsuit was filed in 2021 by Kočo Angjušev, a powerful businessman and former Deputy Prime Minister in North Macedonia. The litigation stemmed from a documentary produced by IRL as a joint investigation with the OCCRP, which was aired in 2021 on the public broadcaster, Macedonian Radio Television.

The lawsuit was initially dismissed in a first-instance verdict in 2021. After an appeal by the plaintiff, the Court of Appeal in May 2022 annulled the verdict and ordered a retrial. In October 2023, although no new evidence was introduced, a judge at the Basic Civil Court ruled against IRL and ordered them to pay symbolic damages and legal costs.

After the 2023 ruling, MFRR partners and the Safe Journalist Network (SJN) expressed alarm over the verdict, which controversially ruled that IRL should be classified as “non-media” and that its staff were “members of a group”, rather than professional journalists. The verdict also suggested that the state should open a misdemeanor procedure for the legality of the work of the organization.

In the latest ruling, the court formally upheld the guilty verdict. The exact justification for the decision is not yet known, as the full written judgement will only be provided at a later stage. The decision was swiftly condemned by the Association of Journalists of Macedonia and the Independent Trade Union of Journalists and Media Workers.