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.
After the election of new Board members in November 2011, BIRN’s new Board and Steering Committee met for the first time in Belgrade from July 6 to July 8.
The new board is composed of Tim Judah, author and Balkan correspondent for the Economist, Wolfgang Petritsch, Austria’s Permanent Representative to the OECD, Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director at Amnesty International, Stefan Lehne, former Austrian diplomat and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe in Brussels, and Per Bymon.
Previously head of Humanitarian Assistance in the Swedish SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency), he is now secretary general of Swedish Radio and Television’s humanitarian foundation, Radiohjälpen.
Ana Petruseva, representative of BIRN members, previously a long-time president of the board, also now joins the board.
The Board was presented with BIRN’s organisational structure, its on-going charitable and commercial programmes, and the organisation’s current success as well as plans for the future.
BIRN’s Statute was put before the members for consideration and, following further input from the team, will be finalised by the end of September.
“It was important for Board members to understand the depth and breadth of what BIRN is, and also to see that each of the local BIRNs can do different things,” Judah, the president of BIRN’s Board, said.
“It was also helpful for people from the local BIRNs to get together and understand what everyone else is doing and share experiences, as well as discuss how to exploit the network’s strength for their mutual benefit,” he added.
BIRN’s staff used the opportunity of the meeting to vote for a new visual identity for the whole organisation, as well as on the new layout of the organisation’s website.
The new visual identity and website will be implemented by the end of the year.
Local BIRN Directors concluded that an internal exchange of personnel should be put into practice, so that BIRN staff members can become better acquainted with their colleagues’ work.
It was also decided that in 2013, the next BIRN annual meeting should be held for the whole organisation.
In only three months, Balkan Transitional Justice (BTJ), a regional initiative of BIRN HUB, has acquired over 6,500 Facebook fans across four different pages.
BTJ aims to inform the public about progress made in overcoming the violent past by addressing topics of regional reconciliation. Balkan Transitional Justice has four fan pages on Facebook – in English (Balkan Insight’s Transitional Justice), BCMS (Balkanska tranziciona pravda), Albanian (Drejtësia Tranzicionale në Ballkan), and Macedonian (Балканска транзициска правда).
The most popular of the four has been the joint Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian fan page with nearly 2,000 fans.
The Albanian fan page was launched in May and 1,545 people have already “liked” it. Both the English and the Macedonian versions have nearly 1,500 fans.
The publication of daily news and analyses by the regional BTJ team began in March 2012 and is composed of six journalists, three translators, and proofreaders. Since then, the BTJ website has published over 700 original articles in English that were translated into Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian, Albanian, and Macedonian.
The BTJ archives currently contain over 2,800 news pieces, analyses, interviews, profiles and background stories in English and the languages spoken in the former Yugoslavia, except Slovenian.
The success of the BJT project on Facebook demonstrates that issues of transitional justice are of great concern and interest to the local public.
Paul Lewis runs teams of journalists at the Guardian newspaper working on a range of investigations. He recently led Reading the Riots, a major research project into the causes and consequences of the England riots.
He was named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards 2010 and won the 2009 Bevins Prize for outstanding investigative journalism for his stories about the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests.
In 2012 Paul was nominated for both Reporter of the Year and the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
Paul lectures across Europe about the use of social media in journalism and teaches a masterclass in investigative reporting.
BIRN’s Slobodan Georgiev participates in the 4M Conference in the French town of Montpellier as the only journalist from Serbia.
The 4M (Montpellier, Mediterranean, Media, Mutations) conference, sponsored by the Canal France International, is devoted to new media and journalism, with special emphasis on reporting the elections and revolutions that have shaken the Arab world last summer. Given that 2011 was marked by the Arab Spring, and 2012 by elections that were held or will take place in Russia, USA, France, Tunisia, Egypt and Greece, the theme of the conference in Montpellier is “E- politics: after the Revolutions, the elections.”
Over one hundred bloggers and journalists from online and print press, and audiovisual platforms from around the world will discuss the impact of media on elections and the role of internet in democratic changes. Discussion threads are „Is the internet a new maker of kings?”, “From citizen journalism to professional journalism: the keys of change? “ and «Investigating on the web: an asset or a constraint?”.
As the only journalist from Serbia, Slobodan Georgiev participated on the panel “The Internet is a new kingmaker”, together with colleagues from the United States, Senegal and Egypt.
Slobodan Georgiev is Serbian journalist, coordinator of projects in the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and administrator of “5 dimes for the media”, a Facebook group which was active in shaping public discussion on internet during the recent elections in Serbia.
Between May 7-9, 2012, Jeta Xharra, BIRN Kosovo Country Director, attended the 2012 Oslo Freedom Forum as one of the speakers.
Xharra was one of 36 speakers at the forum. She gave a presentation entitled “On Air and Under Attack in Kosovo” was about journalism during peacetime and how it can as challenging as journalism during wartime.
She recalled her work during the Kosovo conflict in the late 1990s.
“The media was basically aiding the killings, and de-humanizing the enemy…The war time reporting was worth risking my life and getting occasionally arrested by the Serbian authorities,” Xharra explained.
Xharra’s journalistic career continued following the war.
“I thought things would get boring after the war. It was a time of peace after all…What happened next was that these freedom fighters transformed into politicians, a fascinating transformation to have witnessed as a local journalist.
“In post-war Kosovo, our job as journalists was to make politicians accountable to their public. A piece of cake, I thought. A piece of cake compared to war-zone coverage,” Xharra said.
Xharra described the effects of one of her media products, the current affairs show “Life in Kosovo.”
“It became the first of its kind to broadcast debates, such as those held in every town in Kosovo during the municipal elections. The municipal mayor would declare his promises and a year later the tape would be played back to him.”
“This is when things started to get messy…some of these mayors were former freedom fighters and we challenged them all despite their war credentials. They started using their intimidation tactics by physically threatening me and my team and eventually it led to a 12 day campaign of government tabloids which labelled my team and me as traitors and Serbian spies,” Xharra said.
Xharra defined three lessons that she learned. First, reporting during peacetime can be as difficult as reporting during wartime. Secondly, freedom of speech is not cheap and lastly, form international allies. Xharra concluded her speech by stating that journalists face a never-ending war for the freedom of speech.
The Oslo Freedom Forum is an annual event that started in 2009 to bring humanitarian issues to the top of the global agenda, highlight the stories of human rights advocates an encourage the exchange of ideas.
This year it has brought together and enabled a platform to exchange experiences with some of the most notable and inspiring speakers, including Ahmed Benchemsi, a Moroccan journalist and media entrepreneur, Scott Carpenter, principle at Google Ideas, Nick Cohen, British journalist, author and political commentator, Naomi Natale, installation artist and social activist, Julia Ormond, an Emmy award-winning stage, film and television actress.
The Balkan Initiative for Cultural Cooperation Exchange and Development, BICCED, funded by the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans, is announcing the launch of the first Culture Watch Award.
Journalists from Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia are encouraged to submit stories on any issue related to cultural policy and management published between September 1, 2011 and August 31, 2012. Applications must be received no later than September 30, 2012 through the online application form.
Newspaper, online, television or radio journalists from these countries are expected to submit one serious, investigative and analytical article together with their professional CVs and details of the article’s subsequent impact.
For detailed information on eligibility for the Culture Watch Award, application and the selection procedure, please read the full Guidelines before completing the Application Form, available here.
The total prize money is 3,700 Swiss Franks (CHF) less applicable taxes under the law in Bosnia and Herzegovina; this will be divided among the three winners as follows:
First prize: 2,000 CHF
Second prize: 1,200 CHF
Third prize: 500 CHF
The evaluation board may decide not to award a first prize and instead allocate more second or third prizes depending on the quality of submitted articles.
Over the three years of the BICCED project, more than 30 journalists from Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo have obtained new skills in reporting on policy and management in the area of culture in the region.
The Culture Watch Award is the next step in strengthening analytical and investigative approaches to reporting on cultural policy.
Applications will be evaluated by a jury comprised of six experts on cultural policy in the region and one internationally awarded journalist.
The winners will be announced at a ceremony in the second half of November 2012.
All interested candidates can apply through online application form, or ask additional question by sending an email to [email protected].
The overall picture of the Serbia 2012 elections was one of disappointed citizens, tired of a long election campaign that offered only modest political change, BIRN Serbia monitoring has revealed. Initial results of the monitoring research were presented last night during the Election Night events organized by the Belgrade Media Center.
Monitoring is part of the BIRN Serbia project “Performance evaluation: steps towards political accountability”, which is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
The focus of the electoral monitoring activity was the messaging and main policy points of each of the political parties, as regards the top priorities of citizens – the economy, the fight against corruption, health care services, and education.
The economy, and in particularly new investment, employment policies and new agricultural policies were, by far, the primary focus of this campaign. Other topics were less visible during the campaign – corruption was mostly debated in relation to reducing party monopolies controlling state enterprises and funds, while health and education were only sporadically mentioned.
The political parties offered realistic policies regarding the top political issues, but failed to explain adequately how their reforms would be implemented during the next Government mandate, monitoring results show. BIRN Serbia will continue to monitor the politicians’ performance, to ensure that they fulfill their electoral promises.
A more detailed report will be released to the public after the first 100 days of the new government. The main goal of the report, and of the entire monitoring project, is to help tackle one of the most significant problems of political life – a lack of governmental/politicians’ accountability.
