Bojana Davitkovska has spent years defending journalists and media outlets in North Macedonia, working alongside Media Lawyer Filip Medarski, whose earlier work helped push the country toward decriminalising defamation and insult.
Her connection to the field began at a freedom of expression training organised by USAID. What has followed is more than a decade defending press freedom through some of the country’s most difficult political periods, and, more recently, through a rising tide of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), as she told Media Defence.
Davitkovska traces her commitment to the conviction that freedom of expression is a fundamental pillar of a democratic society. That conviction was tested early in her career: she points to a specific day, 24 December 2012, remembered in North Macedonia as “Black Monday,” when journalists and opposition parliamentarians were forcibly removed from the parliamentary chamber during a budget vote.
It marked the start of what Davitkovska describes as an especially difficult period for press freedom.
Since then, Davitkovska says, the nature of the pressure faced by journalists has changed. “In the past, traditional defamation lawsuits were the predominant form of legal pressure,” she says, “whereas today we are facing a much broader range of challenges, including SLAPP lawsuits and coordinated online campaigns aimed at discrediting or intimidating journalists.” SLAPPs are baseless or exaggerated legal actions filed by wealthy or powerful entities to intimidate, financially drain, and silence journalists, activists, and critics. Cases in which these tactics are used are no longer isolated, she adds; they form part of a broader pattern of pressure against a particular outlet, journalist or investigation.
The bigger picture
North Macedonia dropped to 45th place in Reporters Without Borders’ 2026 World Press Freedom Index, moving from a “satisfactory” to a “problematic” rating. For Davitkovska, that slide reflects a persistent gap between formal legal guarantees and reality for journalists on the ground. “On paper, North Macedonia has relatively strong guarantees for freedom of expression,” she says. “However, in practice, these rights are often ‘conditional’, dependent on the financial capacity of the parties involved, the length of proceedings, and the institutional sensitivity towards media freedom.” A journalist may ultimately win in court, she notes, but by then the financial, professional and psychological harm has already been done.
Davitkovska’s account is echoed in several international monitoring reports. The European Commission’s country reporting on North Macedonia, for example, has flagged serious limitations on media freedom, including violence and threats against journalists.
Structural economic pressures compound the legal ones, Davitkovska explains. Media outlets operating with limited resources are vulnerable even to weak claims, since every lawsuit represents a burden that can push a newsroom toward settlement or self-censorship. Dependence on advertising revenue, whether from state institutions or private companies, adds a further layer of caution around investigative work that touches powerful interests.
An Emblematic Case
This dynamic is particularly clear in the case Davitkovska’s firm is currently handling for the Investigative Reporting Lab (IRL), a partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and its editor-in-chief, Saška Cvetkovska. Both were sued for defamation by businessman and former Deputy Prime Minister Kočo Angjušev over IRL’s 2021 documentary “Conspiracy Against the Air,” about polluting fuel oil allegedly used to heat public hospitals.
The claim has followed a troubled path through the courts. A civil court initially dismissed it as unfounded, but after Angjušev appealed, the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial in 2022. In October 2023, despite no new evidence being presented, a Skopje court reversed the earlier decision and found IRL and Cvetkovska guilty; the presiding judge was later disciplined for excluding the public from the courtroom. The court argued inter alia that IRL was not a media outlet and Cvetkovska not a journalist, a finding press freedom groups say sets a dangerous precedent for who gets to claim journalistic protections. On appeal, the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling in February 2026.
AJM and SSNM, North Macedonia’s journalist associations, called the decision dangerous and said the case has been flagged internationally as a SLAPP. The International Federation of Journalists, European Federation of Journalists, International Press Institute and Pulitzer Centre all condemned the original verdict. IRL plans to file a Request for Protection of Freedom and the Right to Public Expression of Thought before the North Macedonian Constitutional Court and, if necessary, take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Legislation, training, and their limits
North Macedonia is aligning its laws with the EU’s Anti-SLAPP Directive as part of its accession process to the European Union (EU), and judges, prosecutors and lawyers have been receiving training on SLAPPs for years under the EU and Council of Europe’s PRO-FREX programme (formerly JUFREX). Davitkovska is cautious about how far this will go: “I see potential in these reforms, but I am not convinced that they will, on their own, be sufficient,” she says. The missing piece, in her view, is an effective mechanism for the early dismissal of manifestly unfounded claims, without which every case still runs the full, costly course that makes SLAPPs dangerous in the first place.
She is similarly measured about the training programmes themselves. “There has been progress in raising awareness about SLAPPs and media rights, particularly among some younger judges,” she says, “however, the main challenge remains consistency.” Judges or prosecutors who promote European democratic values in training sessions often do not apply them in practice, she observes.
By Davitkovska’s account, the Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) registered twenty-five SLAPP lawsuits against journalists between 2021 and 2025, a figure she calls “concerning” for a country aspiring to EU membership.
A parallel accountability mechanism, a special prosecutor for attacks on journalists, has existed in Skopje since 2022, following an AJM initiative. Davitkovska calls it “a significant institutional step forward” but warns it risks becoming a measure with little practical impact unless matched by faster institutional response, better coordination between the prosecution and the interior ministry, and resolution of older, still-pending cases. Online harassment, she notes, remains a particular blind spot, with persisting impunity for public officials who publicly discredit journalists.
Absorbing the pressure
Asked what stays with her from years of this work, Davitkovska doesn’t point to a single case: “What most often remains in one’s memory is not a single dramatic moment, but the prolonged pressure placed on a journalist working on an investigation concerning a matter of public interest,” she says. “That is the most difficult aspect, when the legal process itself becomes the punishment.”
Defending journalists means absorbing some of that same pressure. Davitkovska describes maintaining “clear professional boundaries” while never losing sight of the fact that these are not merely isolated legal disputes but matters of public interest, support from colleagues and civil society, she says, is essential to sustaining that balance.
Looking ahead, she describes herself as “a cautiously moderate optimist.” EU accession creates real pressure for legislative and institutional reform, she says, but structural problems, the economic vulnerability of media outlets, political polarisation, and slow judicial practice, will not disappear quickly. “In the coming years, I expect we will continue to see a tension between progress on paper and resistance in practice,” she says. “This gap will ultimately define the future of freedom of expression in the country.”
