Tag: Hub

The winner was announced on July 24 in Podgorica by The Network for Affirmation of the NGO Sector, MANS.

The award aims to highlight the achievements of investigative journalists and support and promote quality investigative journalism in Montenegro.

The article – Local Chiefs’ Financial Abuses Blight Montenegrin Costal Town – written by Sanja Rasovic and published in November 2017 on BIRN’s regional publication Balkan Insight, was part of the ‘Investigate for ME and EU’ project, which is being implemented by the Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG) and BIRN.

Strengthening investigative reporting and the capacities of investigative journalists in Montenegro, as well as the quality of media coverage of EU negotiation chapters, are the focus of this EU-supported project that began in February 2017.

The short film presents the stories of two Kosovo women whose husbands went to fight in Syria, and who are now the sole providers for their families.

The film-maker is Lum Çitaku, a creative director, editor and producer in Pristina, Kosovo.

‘Voices from Within’ was made as part of the Pristina-based project Women of Resilience – an initiative aiming to change the balance in public discourse and policy discussions about foreign fighters, which is currently dominated by male voices and experiences.

It will be screened within DokuFest’s ‘Radical Reflections’ strand, which offers a selection of films looking at some of the most pressing issues of today, from the rise of right-wing populism to religious extremism.

Resonant Voices Initiative is a joint programme run by CIJA US, BIRN and the Propulsion Fund to challenge extremist narratives in public discourse throughout the Western Balkans – in particular those disseminated online.

The aim of the project, which will run for the next two years, is to strengthen the independence, accountability and programming output of public service broadcasters RTVSH (Albania), BHRT (Bosnia and Herzegovina), RTK (Kosovo), MKRTV (Macedonia), RTCG (Montenegro) and RTS (Serbia).

The project is a collaboration between the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Austrian public broadcaster (ORF), the Office of the Eurovision News Exchange for South-East Europe (ERNO) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).

The project will deal with three core objectives – promoting European standards and best practices across the Western Balkans, generating synergies between public service media and regional exchanges on policies and practices for a new phase in the media reform process, and expanding and supporting cooperation on investigative journalism, youth programs and regional exchange of digitised archive materials.

BIRN will be the lead partner in building the capacities necessary to produce in-depth investigative reports. Making qualitative and trustworthy investigative journalism available to citizens is one of the key objectives of the project. During the project, BIRN will be offering local journalists from public service media the chance to work under the mentorship of world-renowned experts.

Over 60 representatives of public service media, international organisations, politicians and regulators discussed at the meeting in Tirana the best ways to help and support public service media in the Western Balkans. The meeting follows six months of intensive work to outline the scope of the project and the areas for cooperation and focus.

Launching the project, EBU director General Noel Curran said: “It is more important than ever to protect the editorial and institutional independence of public service media. As a community, we can make a positive impact on media and, by association, democracy throughout the Western Balkans.”

Karl Giacinti, programme manager at the European Commission, said that the EU sees reforms in public service broadcasters as an important part of the overall democratisation process toward EU accession and beyond.

“The reforms have been priorities for years and the EC is impatient to see improvements. We want to see reforms moving ahead visibly. For all these reasons, the EC decided to launch this project and will further invest in this sector to support the production of independent qualitative contents. Additional regional funds managed by Brussels and national funds from the EU Delegations will be available for this and similar initiatives,” said Giacinti.

Head of the EU Delegation to Albania, Romana Vlahutin, spoke of the importance of public service broadcasters’ independence.

“The defining feature of public broadcasting is its inclusiveness and independence: it is funded by the public and therefore it should be made for the public, serve the public and be controlled by the public. No other interest but the public interest should be the guiding principle of the work of every public broadcaster,” Vlahutin said.

Besides public service broadcasters as the main beneficiaries, the project will include cooperation with national parliaments, broadcasting regulatory authorities and relevant media NGOs.

BIRN held meetings in Zagreb and Sarajevo with shareholders at the end of June as part of its Balkan Transitional Justice programme – representatives of victims’ associations and the judiciary, as well as NGO members and humanitarian law experts.

These closed expert meetings discussed the issue of regional cooperation between state authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia on prosecuting crimes from the 1990s wars.

At the meetings, participants raised their concerns about potential problems and offered possible solutions.

This input, along with input from meetings that wil take place in Belgrade and Pristina in early September, will be formulated into recommendations.

After all four meetings with stakeholders, one final conference will be held at the regional level in Sarajevo at the beginning of October.

The recommendations from the stakeholders’ meetings and the conference will be used for creating a policy paper for improving regional cooperation between states in prosecuting war crimes.

In the interview, Aleksandrovych said that “Putin does not care about Serbia”, claiming that Russia’s president is only using Serbia as “another instrument to destroy Europe”.

Aleksandrovych also stressed that that Serbia was not doing enough to stop its citizens from travelling to Ukraine to fight for pro-Russian forces in the conflict in the east.

The ambassador said that Russian propaganda and its secret services had played a huge role in attracting Serbian and other foreign mercenaries to Ukraine.

After BIRN interviewed the Ukrainian ambassador, tensions between Kiev and Belgrade rose.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin called on Serbia to respect his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

After summoning the ambassador to Serbia back to Kiev for consultations on November 3, Ukraine’s government also urged Serbia to show respect for its sovereignty and integrity, and to deal with the issue of Serbs fighting for pro-Russian forces in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine.

According to the article, during a public panel debate entitled “Journalists and the government: Who controls whom?” the editor of the portal pistaljka.rs and president of the Serbian Association of Journalists, Vladimir Radomirovic, said that BIRN had written “about arming terrorists, but did not mention America’s involvement in this”.

One of the panel participants, Bulgarian journalist Diljana Gajtandzijeva, was quoted as saying she believed this was “because BIRN is funded from US funds.”

BIRN would like to point out that, more than once, it has published in-depth investigations into the arms trade involving Saudi Arabia and the United States. No fewer than seven of BIRN’s investigative stories have focused on the role of the US and US institutions in buying and selling arms for Syria.

Based on BIRN’s investigations, prosecutors in Germany have opened an investigation into the role of Germany as an intermediary in such deals.

Recently, Al Jazeera UK, together with BIRN, produced a documentary on the topic which featured, among other interviewees, Diljana Gajtandzijeva.

BIRN’s team of reporters has won a number of regional and international awards for the above-mentioned investigative reports, including the prestigious Global Shining Light Citation of Excellence awarded by the Global Investigative Journalism Network, GIJN, in 2017.