In partnership with six NGOs in Kosovo, BIRN Kosovo participated in the launch of the “Merr Pjese” campaign for civic education for elections.
The campaign aims to foster basic democratic values, including participation, individual voting, voter registration, and action against electoral fraud. It is being implemented from October through November 2012, and covers all the municipalities in Kosovo. As part of the campaign, BIRN Kosovo is also organising community meetings in schools with first time voters to inform them of forms of electoral fraud and penalties that follow.
At the project’s opening conference, Kaltrina Hoxha, BIRN Kosovo Project Coordinator, presented the activities that BIRN Kosovo is carrying out as part of the campaign. “The main focus of these interactive meetings is to raise awareness on violations during electoral processes, ways to report fraud, responsible institutions and their roles and responsibilities, in order to prevent fraud in future electoral processes,” Hoxha said.
BIRN Kosovo has extensive experience in election monitoring and has carried out follow-up activities on violations during electoral processes held in Kosovo. BIRN Kosovo has also filed 20 complaints which have resulted in the annulment of problematic polling stations around the country. At the same time, the organisation has produced lengthy televised reports covering the findings of its monitors in the field.
Journalists and representatives of judicial institutions in Trebinje, BiH are satisfied with their mutual co-operation, but they agree that it could be further improved by educating journalists on reporting court proceedings.
Also, representatives of judicial institutions agree that they should increase their transparency, by announcing information even if the particular pieces of information have not been requested by the media.
Bojan Stevic, President of the District Court in Trebinje, said that no regular press conferences were held, but he had a yearly meeting with journalists, at which they could receive an explanation of certain issues of which they had not been previously aware.
Despite the good collaboration, Stevic points out that journalists and editors should be further educated in order to be able to report from courts in a correct, objective and professional manner.
The District Court in Trebinje does not have a spokesperson, but an information officer who decides whether certain pieces of information will be distributed or not. The Court President explains that a judge, who, at the same time, is President of the Crime Section, addressed journalists in most cases, because he is the one having most pieces of information that can be shared with the public.
Journalists admit that they often fail to follow a proceeding to its very end, which means that they lacked consistency in sharing information. Considering the fact that they claim to have very good collaboration with the spokesperson of the Safety Service Station in Trebinje, they say that the sharing of information about a certain case or proceeding usually ends at that point.
They think that this is caused by the fact that war-crimes trials should be followed by journalists working with public broadcasting stations, rather than those employed with commercial stations. However, they do admit that citizens are certainly interested in war crimes trials, as well as other trials closely related to their local communities.
When it comes to the District Prosecution in Trebinje, journalists point out that they can obtain limited information, but they are aware of the fact that the Prosecution is conducting investigations, which they do not want to undermine. Having all this in mind, they consider their co-operation with the Secretary, who also acts as an information officer, good.
The workshop in Trebinje was held on November 13 with the aim of increasing transparency of judicial institutions and responsibility of the media. The workshop was organized by the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network in collaboration with the Association of Court Reporters with support from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Association of Court Reporters organised a meeting between judicial institutions from Eastern Sarajevo and the media with the aim of establishing better co-operation that would enable citizens to get timely and objective information.
The meeting held on November 20 this year concluded that the District Court in Eastern Sarajevo was ready to establish better co-operation with the media.
The meeting participants said that, in order to achieve better collaboration, it was necessary to educate representatives of the media and judicial institutions, so they would know what type of information they could share with the public and journalists would know how to convey the information in line with court, prosecutorial and journalistic codes of ethic.
In terms of the anonymisation of court documents and verdicts, the meeting participants agreed that it was not necessary to do it, particularly when it comes to verdicts, because the general public should know the first and last names of crime perpetrators with the aim of preventing such crimes from happening again.
As far as the District Court in Sarajevo is concerned, journalists can submit timely requests to the Court President, asking him to allow them to record hearings. These requests are very often approved, enabling journalists to have photographs from courtrooms.
Also, journalists can find public announcements about verdicts and similar documents on the webpage of this institution. The meeting participants agreed that those announcements should be published as soon as the verdicts have been pronounced, so media stations could convey them immediately.
Past co-operation between the media and judicial institutions deteriorated due to the negative experiences of judges and prosecutors from the Eastern Sarajevo area. So, the judges and prosecutors decided not to give interviews or statements to the electronic media, but to submit their responses in writing only.
Another reason for not giving statements to the media lies in the fact that the District Court in Eastern Sarajevo is not able to employ a spokesperson, because, as they say, no financial resources have been allocated for this purpose.
The Eastern Sarajevo Court says that the situation will probably not change in the coming years. Therefore, managers of judicial institutions should provide information to the media in order to ensure transparency of their institutions.
Representatives of the District Court in Eastern Sarajevo say that they are ready to change their practices, particularly those referring to grave crimes, but, at the same time, they expect journalists to prepare factual reports without twisting the facts and adding their personal opinions.
The workshop in Eastern Sarajevo is one in a series of workshops organized by BIRN BiH in collaboration with AIS throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina this year with the aim of increasing the transparency of judicial institutions and responsibility of the media.
The workshops have been organized with help from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
This year’s final gathering of participants from the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is taking place in Skopje, between November 21 to 23.
The selected journalists will present their works in front of a board of international editors.
The jury will select the three best articles from the programme this year.
The members of the board this year are:
Florian Bieber, a professor and director of the Centre for Southeast Studies at the University of Graz
Gerald Knaus, the president of the European Stability Initiative think tank
Remzi Lani, the executive director of the Albanian Media Institute
Milorad Ivanovic, executive editor of the Serbian weekly, Novi
Markus Spielman, editor of the Swiss newspaper, Neue Zeitung Zuricher
Adelheid Wölfl, an editor at the Austrian daily, Der Standard
The winners will be announced on the evening of Friday, 23 November, at a ceremony at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Skopje.
A further 30 journalists from the region who are alumni of the Fellowship are also expected to participate in the event.
The theme for this year’s competition was “communities”. Journalists on the programme reported on topics ranging from football fan groups, the environmental movement, radical Islamists, youth unemployment, orphans and the exploitation of immigrant workers within the European Union.
Some articles from this year’s programme have already been published in prestigious local and international outlets. Several more articles are scheduled for re-publication in the local and international press within the next few weeks.
Launched by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Erste in 2007, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), this annual scholarship provides financial and professional support to journalists, encouraging good reporting in the Balkans region.
“We believe that journalists from south-east Europe should have the chance to be engaged in basic research with an international dimension, beyond their daily duties in their media,” says Robin Gosejohann, Project Manager, Erste Foundation.
“We are pleased to support this programme, along with our partners, for the sixth year in a row, and we will continue with this practice.”
The programme encourages regional networking among journalists and seeks to provide quality reporting on complex reform issues that are of central importance for the region and for the EU.
Ten of this year’s scholars were selected from among more than 120 candidates from nine Balkan countries.
After the completing the programme, they will become part of the Fellowship alumni network of regional journalists.
The competition for next year’s entries will open in early 2013.
More than four hundred residents of Vranje laid out their priorities for the 2013 city budget on November 15 as part of the public event “Your money, our responsibility”.
The street event is one of the initiatives of the authorities of the city of Vranje, in which citizens are directly involved in the budget planning process by expressing their expectations for the financing of certain areas and projects.
Vranje residents chose three out of seven proposed areas they said were their priority for realization in 2013: youth employment, a program of agricultural development and the replacement of asbestos pipes.
Participants had the opportunity to present their proposals at the local budget forum of participatory budgeting, where they discussed spending priorities for the next fiscal year with the Mayor of Vranje, Zoran Antic, and municipal government representatives.
“We want you to know that the administration is open to all your suggestions, but you should also know that only projects that are the highest priority will be realized because there is not enough money for all of them,” Mayor Antic told the meeting attendees.
In years of crisis it is particularly important to manage resources in accordance with good governance and in a responsible and efficient way. Citizen involvement in the formulation of budget priorities will help the city government to use city funds in accordance with the long-term development priorities of the community.
The large turnout at the budget forum showed that citizens are particularly interested in budget planning and the Vranje authorities plan to continue this practice in coming years.
The citizen survey is a part of the good governance campaign “I want to… because I live here” and the project of implementing the practice of participatory budgeting at the local level, realized by BIRN Serbia and funded by the European Union and the Government of Switzerland through the European Partnership Programme with EU PROGRES municipalities in 25 municipalities in the south and southwest Serbia.
BIRN Serbia, in cooperation with NALED, presented a mixed picture of the government’s first one hundred days when they announced the results of their joint monitoring of government efficiency in key areas on November 2.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN Serbia, in cooperation with the National Alliance for Local Economy Development, NALED, presented the results as part of BIRN’s project “Policy-based Accountability Tool for Monitoring Government Performance”.
The project aims to determine the legislation and other measures adopted by the government and their influence in practice and on citizens’ lives in five key areas: public finances, economy, anti-corruption, health and education.
The report, “The First One Hundred Days of Government”, says most success was achieved in the reform of public revenues and spending with the abolition of 138 taxes.
However, participants at the conference in Belgrade said the government had not done enough.
Ernst Bode, board member of NALED, said many problems still hindered businesses in Serbia, adding that the government still interfered in all aspects of the economy.
“Complicated and unclear procedures are still a huge problem. Laws and bylaws are either outdated, completely unnecessary, unenforceable or unclear – and sometimes implementation requires enormous efforts but gives very little results,” Bode said.
Nemanja Nenadic, programme director for the watchdog organisation Transparency Serbia, said the government had the right intention as it worked to fight corruption in the field of public procurement.
But he warned that corruption in the biggest procurements still went unpunished. “Unfortunately we deal with peanuts,” he said.
He added that the fight against corruption should not be left to individual ministers but was a task for the government as a whole.
Sasa Randjelovic, assistant at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, said that during and after the elections little attention was devoted to the educational system and all that has been done in the past few months has been in the area of fiscal consolidation.
He added that implementation of compulsory secondary education should be considered, while in higher education the quality of interaction with students should be improved and students should be sent abroad for specialization.
Although the government has undertaken various measures in the field of fiscal consolidation, experts at the conference agreed that without root and branch structural reform there will not be substantial impact, or much improvement in living conditions in Serbia.
More than 20 journalists from all over the world are taking part in BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting at Lake Mavrovo in Macedonia.
Sheila Coronel, director and professor of Professional Practice at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, opened the third annual BIRN Summer School explaining what investigative journalism is and how to conceptualise an investigation.
Coronel showed how an investigation might be carried out through a case study, an investigation into corruption in the Philippines involving the former Philippines president, Joseph Estrada.
Marcus Lindemann provided insights into the use of modern, online tools for information gathering.
Lindemann, an executive producer and journalist from Germany whose reports often appear on ZDF, Europe’s largest TV station, introduced journalists to a range of ways of finding information online, beyond doing searches on Google.
Mark Schoofs, a senior editor at ProPublica and a two times Pulitzer Prize winner, introduced journalist to investigative techniques with data-driven journalism.
The principal focus of the BIRN Summer School is the reporting of organised crime and corruption for print and broadcast media, but the school will also cover the issues of censorship and self-censorship in the Balkans.
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is an EU PROGRES project implemented by BIRN Serbia which aims to support the local authorities in 25 municipalities and cities across south-east and south-west Serbia to advance, develop or adopt PB process.
The project is designed to give Serbia’s citizens access to consultative processes on spending priorities. At a meeting held on 24th, 25th and 26th of August in Kraljevo, BIRN Serbia gathered representatives of the Budgeting Departments of the local authorities who exchanged experiences in the budgeting process.
The main topic was improving the budgeting processes by increasing the public participation. The basis for the discussion on how to introduce PB practices in the 2013 budget was the Analysis of existing local budget trends, a report prepared by BIRN associates – experts in the field of finances and economy.
The meeting also provided participants with information on concepts and goals of participatory budgeting, role of local self-governance in it, timeline, preconditions and mechanisms of public participation, relevant stakeholders and necessary resources.
The meeting in Kraljevo will be followed by many other activities within the project Participatory Budgeting that will last until February 2013
The first ever report in Serbia to examine the existing models used for financing media through local self-governments has been presented at the Nis Media Centre.
The survey was carried out by BIRN Serbia over the last two months on behalf of Media Coalition, an umbrella organisation representing five major media associations in Serbia.
“The purpose of the report is to map out trends in the field of financing local media and to draw attention to this issue which lays in the foundation of the media freedom,” said Dragana Zarkovic Obradovic, the director of BIRN Serbia.
The report was based on the analysis of the budgets of 33 Serbian municipalities that have media activity with regional reach. The survey sample did not include Belgrade and Kosovo.
It showed that almost 8,5 million euros are spent annually on financing local media, but most of that amount, more than 70%, is spent for the work of 26 public broadcasters, while the remaining 125 privately owned media share the rest.
It shows imbalance in the media market, which affects fair competition and, as a final result, negatively influences editorial policies.
BIRN has identified four basic models of financing local media: the dominating models involve giving subsidies to public services and directly contracting media for services of covering the work of the local government.
At the same time, only 6 out of 33 municipalities are supporting media through transparent public processes, spending in that way less than 10% of the total amount for the local media.
Media Coalition will draw a set of recommendations based on the report, which will be broadly circulated and also presented to the Government.
Vukasin Obradovic, president of the Independent journalists associations, praised the report which has provided the Coalition with solid data to support their calls for the more transparent and fair distribution of financial resources to the overcrowded Serbian media market.
According to Serbian laws local authorities have to provide information of local relevance and ensure it is delivered in Serbian and the languages of the ethnic minorities used on the territory of the respective municipality.
As a result each town and municipality plans within its budget the funds for local media.
After the democratic changes of 2000, the dual media system, involving a parallel existence of public service broadcasters and commercial media, which was enshrined by the Broadcasting Law (2003), involved a fundamental transformation of the state broadcaster RTS at state level, but also the privatization of media founded by local authorities.
The privatization process, however, was stopped in 2007 and a number of privatizations was cancelled due to poorly prepared and executed tender procedures.
Such a situation paved the way for the discretion right of local authorities in the financing and control of local media which they finance directly and indirectly, as well as for the indirect influence on editorial policies.
The analysis of the survey’s results can be downloaded in English and Serbian.
Long-time BIRN staffer honoured for her contribution to democratization and better understanding in Southeast Europe.
The South East Europe Media Organisation, SEEMO, an affiliate of the International Press Institute, IPI, has named Jeta Xharra as winner of the 2012 Dr Erhard Busek – SEEMO Award for Better Understanding in South East Europe.
A 10-member international jury chose Xharra for the award based on her outstanding contribution to the process of democratization and better understanding in South East Europe.
“This is recognition of BIRN’s contribution to raising journalistic standards in our region. I feel exceptionally privileged that it has been recognized that debates and investigative reporting that the BIRN team and myself have produced over the years have contributed to more rule of law, more accountability and more freedom of speech in our region and particularly in my young country,” Xharra said.
The award, which carries a cash prize of €3,000, will be presented on November 16 in Vienna by Dr Erhard Busek, president of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, and by Oliver Vujovic, SEEMO’s secretary general.
Since 2005, Xharra has been Kosovo director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, as well as a presenter and the editor-in-chief of Life in Kosovo, a TV programme that combines investigative journalism and discussions.
Kosovo’s most-watched television current affairs show is shown weekly on Radio Television Kosovo, RTK, and is credited with pushing the boundaries of debate, holding the authorities to account and opening up discussion on taboo subjects.
BIRN Kosovo has 70 staff members and contributors, producing English-language publications, such as Balkan Insight and Prishtina Insight, as well as broadcasting radio and TV programmes and printing publications in local languages, including the newsletter Justice in Kosovo and reports from BIRN’s Courts Monitoring Project.
Xharra started her journalistic career as a local producer for BBC News and Channel 4 in 1998, and rose to become manager of the BBC’s Kosovo Bureau. In 1999, she worked for BBC News in Albania and Macedonia. In 2003 she opened the Kosovo office of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, IWPR.
Xharra has lived most of her life in Pristina, where she attended school and university. She studied drama at the Academy of Arts in Kosovo. She also lived in London, where she obtained a Master’s in War Studies at King’s College in 2000 and a Master’s with distinction in Screenwriting from the London College of Printing in 2002.
In London, she wrote the play Warless, which was presented as a reading at London’s Royal Court Theatre during the Young Writer’s Festival in 2004. She has contributed to various different publications in the United Kingdom, including theIndependent, the Economist, the Sunday Telegraph and Jane’s Intelligence Review. In Britain, Xharra worked for the Foreign News Planning Desk at the BBC World Service and for IWPR.
The Dr Erhard Busek – SEEMO Award honours journalists, editors, media executives, media experts, writers and journalism trainers in South East Europe who have contributed to promoting better understanding in the region and who have worked towards solving minority-related problems, ethnic divisions, racism, xenophobia, gender discrimination and homophobia among other issues.
Busek, a former Vice-Chancellor of Austria, is Jean Monet Professor ad personam, president of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, coordinator of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative, SECI, and former special coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe.
