The intent behind the present study is to explore the financial revenues of media organizations as well as to probe the practice of allocating public funds for advertisement and dissemination of information in media outlets. The study mainly rests on the analysis of documents which included documentation accessible in the electronic database of state procurement agency and the National Communications Commission, also additional data requested from public entities and information available in the public domain. Moreover, a qualitative analysis of media content was carried out by applying the principle of random selection and based on the contracts entered into by and between administrative bodies and media outlets. The first part of the report discusses problems concerning the financial transparency of broadcast media, also the data on the revenues of broadcasters, which are publicly available at the time of writing this report; the second reviews the distribution of budgetary funds among TV channels to ensure the dissemination of advertisements and information; the third part explores whether the budgetary contracts imply the interference into editorial independence of media outlets and whether the media outlets observe professional standards that require the separation of financed materials from editorial content; the fourth part provides examples evidencing whether media outlets observed the professional standard of separating financed materials from editorial content during the 2017 local election campaign.

Financial Transparency of Media 2017 by Media Development Foundation on Scribd