Mirna Buljugic, the director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH), participated in the ODIHR Trial Monitoring annual meeting in Skopje, Macedonia, at the end of April 2017.
The objective of the meeting was to share good practice and talk about challenges to trial monitoring around the world.
Buljugic presented BIRN BiH’s work at a session entitled Access to Information, talking about challenges journalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina are facing trying to access audio and video material from court hearings, court files (indictments and verdicts) and interviews with legal professionals.
BIRN BiH’s campaign ‘Stop Censorship on War Crimes’ was shared as an example of good advocacy campaign that successfully encouraged people to put pressure on judicial institutions to change practices and rules forbidding the public from getting relevant information on war crime trials.
At least one story promises to read like a crime thriller. Others will delve deep into corruption, public health and human rights. All involve meticulous research and the highest standards of cross-border reporting.
In its eleventh year, the programme kicked off with an opening seminar in Vienna for 10 new fellows from across the Balkan region.
Chosen from more than 130 applications, the fellows are from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.
This year’s theme is change, giving the mid-career journalists broad scope to tackle issues ranging from the rise of populism and historical revisionism to Europe’s refugee and migrant crisis.
“I already had a look at the topics that you have proposed and I’m really glad to see that you indeed have taken several of the most pressing topics that the Balkans have,” Ulrike Lunacek, Austrian MEP and vice-president of the European Parliament, told fellows in a video message made for the seminar.
“It’s about environmental issues, family issues, women’s rights, LGBTi, refugee discrimination issues, but it’s also about rising nationalism.”
Ulrike Lunacek, Vice-President of the European Parliament welcoming 2017 fellows
At the ERSTE Foundation’s gleaming new headquarters, participants received practical tips on international standards in researching, reporting and structuring long-form stories that will be published at the end of the year in local languages as well as English and German.
A key goal was to refine story proposals based on initial applications. Individual editorial sessions were led by BFJE programme Editor Timothy Large, Balkan Insight Editor-in-Chief Gordana Igric and BFJE Programme Manager Dragana Zarkovic. The aim was to help fellows sharpen the focus of their stories and develop research and travel plans.
Timothy Large takes over as BFJE editor from Matt Robinson, now Reuters special correspondent for Central and Eastern Europe. Timothy was previously director of media development at the Thomson Reuters Foundation and editor-in-chief of global news services for the philanthropic arm of Reuters. Over coming months, he will work closely with fellows as they research, report and write their stories.
The seminar also included a visit to the newsroom of the Austrian daily derStandard, media partner of the programme; a multimedia and mobile journalism workshop run by Gunther Müller and David Klein from Forum Journalismus und Medien; and a presentation on press freedom, defamation and journalists’ legal rights by Barbara Trionfri, executive director of the International Press Institute.
The Annual Report presents the entire range of BIRN’s activities across the region from the perspectives of visibility, reach and impact.
In 2016, members of the BIRN network operated in a challenging environment which was marked by authoritarian tendencies among political elites, political turmoil, economic difficulties and deteriorating media freedoms. Political and financial pressure on the media, the refugee crisis, the long-term economic crisis and accompanying high unemployment, and high levels of corruption are just some problems that countries in the region have experienced.
Through investigative, analytical and specialised coverage of underreported topics such as war crimes cases, the flow of public money, cases of potential or verified corruption, problems within justice systems, media freedoms and ethics, and security issues etc., BIRN continued to play an important role in providing people in the Balkans with access to accurate information.
The Annual Report presents the entire range of BIRN’s activities across the region from the perspectives of visibility, reach and impact.
In this way, we show the scope and significance of the Network’s endeavours: for audiences in the countries of the region and beyond, media professionals, academics, policy makers (in the region and in international organisations), for the civil society sector, and for vulnerable groups. BIRN journalists and film-makers have also received awards for their work in their respective countries and internationally, and the report provides information about this.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Albania held a two-day training session on the April 29-30 in the city of Durres, which aimed to strengthen the media’s role in exposing illicit political party financing.
The training session was part of a project entitled ‘Strengthening the Media’s Role in Transparency of Political Party Financing’, supported by the National Democratic Institute, NDI, in Albania and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
About 25 journalists from Tirana and across Albania participated in the two days of training, which provided a guide to the basic methods and techniques of investigative journalism as well as an overview of political parties’ finances in Albania.
The training aimed to strengthen the skills of mid-career journalists to look closely at systemic issues of illicit financing of political parties and conflict of interest, with a special focus on the red flags raised by Central Election Commission reports.
Presentations were given by political scientist and Tirana University professor Afrim Krasniqi, the head of the Albania Science Institute Aranita Brahaj, the deputy head of the Institute of Authorized Chartered Auditors of Albania, Eleonora Olli, NDI advisor Vildan Plepi and BIRN Albania Editor-in-Chief Besar Likmeta.
The training will be followed by a call for participating journalists on analytical stories related to political party finances, with a special focus on the June 18 parliamentary elections.
This year’s BIRN Summer School will be held in the stunning Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik from August 20-26.
The summer school will bring together some of the world’s best journalists and trainers for a six-day programme.
Reporters will have the opportunities to learn cutting-edge investigative skills and enjoy the delights of the Adriatic Sea.
Reuters editor Blake Morrison, three times a finalist for the Pulitzer investigative award, has been appointed lead trainer.
He will be joined by multiple-award-winning reporter/editor Miranda Patrucic from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Henk van Ess, an expert in Open Source Investigative Journalism, plus others.
During the sessions, journalists will learn how to dig for data, convince difficult sources to talk, transform their research into sparking prose and harness the power of video.
All participants will have the opportunity to apply for the Investigative Story Fund andthe three best story ideas will be awarded with funding ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 euros.
The location isMlini, a pretty fishing village located 10 kilometres south of Dubrovnik, the so-called ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’.
It offers a quiet setting with stunning beaches and excellent seafood, while Dubrovnik itself is internationally renowned for its fascinating history and breathtaking architecture.
Participants will have the chance to enjoy the idyllic surroundings while honing their investigative journalism skills.
Three BIRN stories have been named as finalists for this year’s Investigative award by Independent Journalistic Association of Serbia in the categories for electronic [TV and radio], print and on-line media.
The jury, composed of Danica Vucenic, journalist from Insajder, Milorad Ivanovic, editor-in-chief of Newsweek Serbia, Predrag Blagojevic, editor-in-chief of online portal Juzne vesti and Pedja Obradovic, producer at TV N1, chose the following BIRN stories:
BIRN Serbia journalist Jelena Veljkovic wrote on how Serbia’s Property Directorate claimed not to know that an exclusive restaurant had been opened in a part of the Belgrade Cooperative building, which the directorate leased to the “Belgrade on water company, refusing to answer whether it believed this use of public property was in accordance with the law.
The article was published in the weekly Vreme.
“Flatland without Birds?”, a documentary about illegal hunting in Serbia is nominated for the electronic media category.
The film, by journalist Dragan Gmizic, co-produced by BIRN Serbia and Greenfield Productions, examines how hunting rare turtle doves and quail is organised in Serbia and asks how and whether it can be controlled. The documentary was aired on TV N1, TV CG and Al Jazeera Balkans.
The story revealed how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns have poured into the Middle East from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The same story is also among three finalists for the Czech Journalism Prize, the best-known Czech media award.
This year, 75 journalists applied for the award given by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, NUNS, and the US embassy in Serbia.
The award ceremony will take place at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade on May 10 at 5.30pm.
BIRN journalists have won this prize for the last four years.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Albania on April 26 presented its newly published national report, Local Government Under the Lens of Freedom of Information: A Comparative Monitoring of Transparency Indicators Online and On the Ground 2016-2017.
The report was published as part of BIRN Albania’s project Strengthening the Local Partnership between Media and Civil Society.
The project, funded by Leviz Albania and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, aims to strengthen the public’s pressure mechanisms on local government institutions and increase transparency by strengthening cooperation between journalists, civil society groups and grassroots organisations.
The report contains the results on the transparency of the 61 local government units in Albania, based on 50 indicators, evaluated in both 2016 and 2017, tracing the progress made by local municipalities in the implementation of the freedom of information and public consultation laws.
According to the monitoring data, these indicators were realised by 46 per cent of local municipalities in 2017, with the majority of the municipalities failing to realize half of the monitored indicators.
The figure represents a modest improvement of three per cent from 2016, when the transparency level was 43 per cent.
The new data collected through the report in 2017 shows that as in 2016, local municipalities in Albania are more transparent when it comes to the ‘freedom of information’ and ‘municipal councils’ category/indicator, and less transparent on a national level in ‘financial transparency’ and ‘legislation’.
The monitoring of municipalities for the report was carried out in February 2017 and June 2016 by a network of local journalists across Albania.
Strengthening the media’s role in transparency of political party financing.
Durres, April 29-30, 2017
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Albania (BIRN Albania), as part of the project ‘Strengthening the media’s role in transparency of political party financing’ supported by the National Democratic Institute in Albania, will organize a two-day training session in investigative journalism techniques that help shed light in the field of political party financing in the country.
BIRN Albania is seeking 15 mid-career journalists from all the regions of Albania to attend the investigative journalism training workshop on April 29th-30th 2017, in Durres.
Introduction to the training:
The training serves to provide a guide to the basic methods and techniques of investigative journalism as well as an overview of the political parties’ finances in Albania. It aims to strengthen the skills and training of mid-career journalists to look closely at systemic issues of illicit financing of political parties and conflict of interest, with a special focus on the red flags raised by the reports filed in the Central Election Commission, CEC.
Who should attend:
The training targets mid-career journalists in Albania who are interested to deepen their knowledge of investigative journalism techniques and political party finances in Albania. Journalists from other regions outside Tirana are encouraged to apply. BIRN Albania will cover travel costs for all journalists participating in the training.
Training objectives:
The outcome for participants will be:
1. Improved understanding of Albania’s political party finances;
2. Improved applied methods and techniques of investigative journalism.
Application procedure:
Interested candidates must send a letter of interest to [email protected]. Applications for this training close on Thursday, April 27th. Successful candidates will be informed shortly thereafter.
Bursaries:
The journalists who take part in the training will participate in a competition from which BIRN Albania through an independent jury will select story ideas for five in-depth analyses related political party finances that will be funded from the project and published with the help of BIRN editors via the online publication Reporter.al.
The University of Prishtina has been plagued with scandals in recent years, leading BIRN to investigate the university’s practices. Through its television programme “Life in Kosovo,” BIRN presented its findings on suspicious promotion cases and dubious professorial publishing practices.
Responding to allegations that the University of Prishtina promoted academics with disregard to meritocratic criteria, Marjan Dema, the university’s current rector, shifts the blame to the Senate, explicitly declaring that the previously mentioned is under the Senate’s responsibility. Rozafa Koliqi, a whistleblower, revealed allegedly unjust promotion practices at the Faculty of Medicine on BIRN’s programme, declaring that she was unjustly rejected for the position of teaching assistant at this faculty. “Life in Kosovo” shed light onto the suspicious voting procedures of University of Prishtina senators, which failed to apply the highest standards for ensuring equality in the selection and promotion of academic staff.
A group of civil society organizations, including BIRN, sent a letter to Minister of Education Arsim Bajrami, explicitly displaying their concerns about academic integrity within the university and asking him to find a solution for the dire state of Kosovo’s higher education. Bajrami confronted these public concerns after a detailed investigation by “Life in Kosovo” and wrote a letter to Dema demanding that the University of Prishtina ensure the application of the highest academic principles and standards of transparency when selecting and promoting academic staff.
Representatives of the Organization for Increasing Quality in Education, ORCA, contributed to the topic by presenting its sobering findings from their report on the academic integrity of the managing staff, which claims that a high percentage of the university’s faculty published in fraudulent articles.
“Life in Kosovo” also hosted two European-Commissioned experts, Ian Smith and Tom Hamilton, who discussed high salaries and “vulgar corruption” within the university. The guests emphasized the crucial need to fight corruptive behavior in Kosovo’s higher education. Their own report came after the recent scandals involving unfair promotions, revealed by BIRN, at the University of Prishtina.
On April 4th, 2017, BIRN was pleased to participate in a weekly salon organized by Democracy for Development, D4D, in Prishtina to discuss the phenomenon of fake news. Opening remarks were delivered by the panelists, including BIRN representatives, about the Internet’s strong influence on loosening the public’s grip on the truth.
BIRN reaffirmed the notion that those who care about democratic governance must keep asserting the importance of facts as a means of resisting government coercion. Panelists emphasized that the media has a responsibility towards providing not only the truth, but the ‘whole truth.’ Literacy is not enough. Challenging our assumptions, pondering relevant questions, and actively seeking additional information on what we are reading is mandatory to support factual accuracy.
Panelists said that though social media has the tendency to provide everyone with a voice, there is a troubling downside to this revolution. Social media has enabled the dissemination of fake news and contributes to misrepresentations of reality. Readers are confronted nowadays with a flood of fake information, and distinguishing between fact and fiction has become a challenge. During the panel discussion, participants shared their concerns about how misleading the news can be and shared best practices for approaching fake news. BIRN, along with other panelists, shared its advice with the wider public on resisting confirmation bias through the expansion of the sources of information we seek.
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