Category: News and Events

The European Court of Human Rights has asked both the Serbian government and a BIRN staffer, Sofija Todorovic, for more explanation, after she submitted a complaint to it about right-wingers who had targeted her online.

The court called on both sides to submit additional information and clarification by July 5.

Her lawyer called it a milestone. “This is the first time the European Court of Human Rights took into the consideration a case of online persecution in Serbia, defending human rights defenders,” Mihailo Pavlovic, who is representing Todorovic, told BIRN.

He noted that the court had raised the question of whether Serbia had any mechanisms to protect people from being targeted online.

In its letter copied to Todorovic on June 28, the court asked the Serbian government to send additional documents and explain what protective measure it had taken in this case, and whether it had assessed the level of risk to Todorovic’s safety.

It also asked the government to explain under which statutory conditions persons who have been threatened on social networks obtain police protection in Serbia.

Serbian right-wingers launched a concerted campaign against the BIRN project coordinator after she reported on the plight of an ethnic Albanian baker who was being targeted in her hometown.

She then herself became a target, receiving hate speech, insults and threats on social media coupled by attempts to hack her account on Twitter.

Todorovic took the matter to the Serbian police on May 6, and one day later she informed Serbia’s Special Prosecution for Cyber Crime. After submitting several complaints that elicited no reaction, Todorovic’s lawyer, Pavlovic, filed a complaint about the work of the Prosecution to the Court of Appeal.

When the Prosecution still failed to contact her, on June 24, she filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights with material.

The coordinated targeting began after Todorovic documented nationalist intimidation of an ethnic Albanian baker in Serbia called Mon Gjuraj. Nationalists first re-posted on Facebook a two-year-old picture of his cousin posing with a hand gesture in the shape of a double-headed eagle, the national symbol of Albanians.

On April 27, nationalists then gathered in front of his bakery in a Belgrade suburb, shouting slogans and playing Serbian nationalist songs. Some stuck posters proclaiming “Kosovo is Serbia” on the bakery windows, and threw a pig’s heads at the bakery – a reference to his being a Muslim. A similar event was organized again on May 4.

During the April 27 events, Todorovic was live tweeting and posting videos of the incidents.

Since then, she has received months of online threats. Right-wingers also posted videos about her, calling her insulting names, mentioning her family and re-posting old pictures that are no longer public.

It will be followed by a second workshop later in 2019, after which participants will teach courses in investigative journalism in 2020 and 2021.

The training is led by Frederic Frantz from the EBU Academy.

The training is part of an EU-funded project, “Strengthening Quality News and Independent Journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey,” carried by BIRN Hub and its partners. The overall objective of the project is to provide structural support for media freedom and media integrity in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

The three-step approach

• First, participants will attend the 3-day Training of Trainers course and will learn how to design and teach a course for professionals. If needed, simultaneous translation will be provided.
• A second workshop will help participants design courses in investigative journalism. This workshop is planned to be held in Podgorica, Montenegro.
• Participants will then be expected to teach their courses to groups of younger colleagues from their countries, once in 2020 and again in 2021. The course will last one to three days each time. Financial compensation will be provided for each of these training days.

 Practical information for prospective attendees:

• The project will cover travel and accommodation costs (if needed).
• The first training will happen in Sarajevo, from September 24 to 26 (TBC).
• The second training will be held before the end of 2019.
• Once a participant delivers his or her first course, he or she will be awarded the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Academy Trainer’s diploma.

How to apply

Send an email to [email protected] with your CV attached by 12:00 on Monday, September 2, 2019.

Download Agenda of the training

Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor at Reuters and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, is the lead trainer for the 10th annual Birn Summer School. The School will be hosted in the heart of Boka Bay at Herceg Novi and will run from August 18th to August 25th, with participants from across the Western Balkans and Europe.

In addition to Morison’s lectures, the more than 30 participants will have an opportunity to learn from some of the world’s leading editors and journalists, such as Frederick Obermaier (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Benjamin Strick (BBC Africa Eye and Bellingcat) and many more.

Since joining Reuters, Morrison has overseen and edited a variety of projects that includes two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize: The Child Exchange, an investigation of America’s underground market for adopted children, and The Echo Chamber, a special report that revealed how a handful of lawyers came to have an outsize influence at the U.S. Supreme Court. At BIRN Summer School he will reveal the secrets of interviewing to attendees, teach them how to conceive and organize an investigative project, and help them learn to imagine a story.

Frederick Obermaier, an investigative journalist for Süddeutsche Zeitung and one of the initiators and coordinators of the ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation, will teach participants how to investigate large data sets and verify leaks.

As part of the Panama Papers team he won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting; the George Polk award; the Perfil award; and the Nannen Preis, a prestigious German journalism prize. He was voted, together with his colleagues Bastian Obermayer and Vanessa Wormer, “German Journalist of the Year 2016”.

In addition to the Panama Papers, Obermaier was a part of the team that uncovered Germany’s role in the United States’s drone war. Obermaier has received numerous awards for his other work, including the CNN-Award in 2011 and the Wächterpreis der Tagespresse and Helmut Schmidt Prize in 2013.

Participants in the BIRN Summer School will also have the opportunity to study open source investigations from one of the leading researchers in the field—Benjamin Strick, an open-source investigator for BBC Africa Eye and Bellingcat. Strick, with a background in law and the military, was part of the BBC Africa Eye team that developed Anatomy of a Killing, a reconstruction of the killing of civilians in Cameroon in 2015. Anatomy of a Killing won a Peabody Award and a Webby award in the Documentary: Longform category.

BIRN’s own Ivan Angelovski and Ivana Jeremic will teach attendees how to fact check their stories and how to track ships and planes online.

Participants will also have the opportunity to learn from journalist Andrew Baker, who will show them how to visualize investigation, including using smartphones to do so. Award winning German journalist Olaf  Sundermeyer will talk about investigative documentaries focused on organized crime and political extremism.

Beyond lectures, participants will enjoy screenings and discussions of award-winning documentaries, including “Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World.”

BIRN’s Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s Media Program South East Europe.

The organisations will identify the main players involved in disinformation and propaganda by establishing a Digital Monitoring database. The database will cover the state of digital rights in targeted countries by documenting cases of violations of digital rights and freedoms, with descriptions of cases and corresponding sources.

The project, supported by Civitates, will monitor digital freedom violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.

The database will be part of the broader online BIRN Investigative Resource Desk (BIRD), a new resource platform for investigative journalists expected to launch this fall. The interactive database will allow the general public to access data collected through the monitoring system.

The use of SHARE Foundation’s expertise will result in the creation of a detailed methodology and guidelines for monitoring violations of digital rights and freedoms, as well as training for monitors to successfully gather data and file them in the newly created database. A three-day training for monitors will be held in the second half of July in Perast, Montenegro.

In parallel, BIRN journalists will produce and publish five investigations related to the topic. On the basis of monitoring activities, a one-of-a-kind cross-regional report will be produced, to be presented at the closing event.

The database will provide the data for periodical reports on the state of digital rights and freedoms in targeted countries. In terms of outcomes, the cross-regional report will compile collected data in order to introduce public to trends in violations of digital freedoms.

Continuous monitoring and reporting on digital threats will contribute to BIRN’s wider efforts to promote accurate and unbiased information. It will strengthen the capacities and skills of the network’s journalists, as well as exposing and countering threats that journalists and other engaged individuals face on a regular basis.

BIRN launched its latest project, Reporting Democracy, on Friday in Budapest with a conference that heard about the rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of the media and about activism.

Experts agreed that democracy could not be taken for granted because populists and the far right present a serious threat to democracy across the EU, especially in vulnerable regions such as the Balkans.

“The reasons why we see an erosion of democracy and doubt whether democracy is right for us is that we have lived a long period where there was no challenge, where we have seen linear progress, and the clouds only came with the economic and financial crisis in 2008, and with the technological revolution, where people became worried that will they be replaced,” Ivan Vejvoda, Director of Europe’s Futures project, said.

Vejvoda explained that the rise of far right and populist movements was fueled by the perception that mainstream political parties and media are “not dealing with real issues”.

“This is why the work that quality journalism does, which unveils the various shenanigans between those in power and those in mafia … is vital… Only by projects like this, and similar ones, can we stand up and live up to our values – freedom and liberty,” Vejvoda said.

Lydia Gall, from the Human Rights Watch, said that in many countries there are sustained attacks on the judiciary, journalists and watchdog organizations. “If this is allowed, then the government controls the message,” she said.

In order to battle the rise of far right, Kristof Bender, ESI’s Deputy Chairman, proposed that mainstream parties need to master basic political tools – make better speeches, mobilize better, and be better at persuading citizens to follow European and human rights values.

“Finally, there is a need to uphold principles on basic human rights and standards – this is needed to uphold democracy and its important to note that one can win with that approach,” he said.

The conference also heard that the regression of democracy in Europe has opened the door to Russian and Chinese influence.

“Many of these populists, like Viktor Orban, claim they are sovereignty-ists, and they are when it comes to the EU, but we never see that when it comes to the influence of Russia and China,” Peter Kreko, Director at Political Capital Institute, said.

The second panel of the conference talked about the role of the media in reporting about populism and human rights violations.

Pauline Adès-Mével, from Reporters Without Borders, said the situation was deteriorating and violence against journalists in Eastern countries has been spreading to the West.

“The problem we are seeing right now in Europe is the decline of press freedom, but also something which goes hand in hand with politics – increasing authoritarianism. These two are linked and that is a problem. This causes more pressure and attacks on journalists,” she added.

Edit Inotai, the Reporting Democracy Correspondent from Hungary, said that there is a frightening echo chamber where there is no debate.

“You cannot talk about facts and things happening. If someone does not like something, it is labelled as fake news,” she said.

In order to battle these pressures, BIRN Macedonia director Ana Petruseva said journalists have to build coalitions.

“Journalists need to do far more, not just in solidarity, but in forming strong ties and doing more in joint work and coalitions, because at the end of the day we are going to be talking about sustainability, which can make the media make money … but journalists have not been fast and successful enough in forging these coalitions and overcoming small differences, and in developing ways how to promote and sell or spread their stories and investigations,” she said.

The final panel of the conference discussed the role of civic protests in Europe and participants heard about various movements on behalf of human rights and freedoms.

Branislav Trifunovic, actor and organizer of #1od5miliona protests, called for citizens to show courage and rage.  “You have to be angry at these governments. Just rage against the machine,” he said.

Reporting Democracy is a cross-border journalistic platform dedicated to exploring where democracy is heading across large parts of Europe.