BIRN Hub Outputs

The latest report published by BIRN and Share Foundation sheds further light on the trends in digital rights violations in Central and Southeastern Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reporting Democracy’s first annual trends report shows that democracies in Central and Southeast Europe need intensive care to survive an unprecedented time of crisis.

From January 26 to May 26, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic in Central and Southeastern Europe, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and SHARE Foundation uncovered 163 cases of digital rights breaches in Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and North Macedonia, of which 68 were linked to manipulations in the digital environment, while 25 were related to publishing falsehoods and unverified information with the intention to damage the victims’ reputation.

BIRN Investigative Resource Desk (B.I.R.D.) is an innovative interactive platform created for journalists who want to keep up-to-date with the fast-changing world of technology without sacrificing their ethics or the standards of professional journalism.

Liberal-sounding access to information laws – vital for a free media – have yet to bring real transparency to the traditionally secretive countries of the Balkan region, a BIRN report shows.

BIRN has published an updated and improved version of its War Crimes Verdicts Map, an interactive tool that offers an overview of hundreds of court rulings on the crimes committed during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and Impunity Watch are launching a new report examining gender equality, transitional justice and the role of the international community in former Yugoslav states.

The Annual Reports provide an overview of BIRN Hub’s activities throughout the given year.
The Audit Reports contain data on BIRN’s finances during a year as audited by an external certified auditor.

BIRN published an e-book entitled ‘Radovan Karadzic: Wartime Leader’s Years on Trial’, ahead of the former Bosnian Serb wartime president’s final trial verdict on March 20, 2019.

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network published the report “After the ICTY: Accountability, Truth and Justice in former Yugoslavia” which aims to map current challenges in regional cooperation over war crimes prosecutions and missing persons, victims’ participation, and the role of archives, art, media and museums in dealing with the past.

This is an overview of the BIRN Network activities and achievements in 2017-2018, the social and political context in which it operates, the prizes its journalists won and the impact of its reporting.

BIRN’s journalistic work produced in 2017 some very tangible social and political changes, both within the region and internationally, showing that non-profit media can influence the work of public institutions and authorities when applying high professional standard to their work.

The report shows what the organisation did to offer high quality journalistic work and to provide citizens with reliable, timely and in-depth reporting as well as BIRN’s contribution to improving media freedom and openness of public institutions.

A regional comparison of how media report on cases of organized crime and corruption in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia analysing the main obstacles faced by reporters.

E-book entitled ‘Ratko Mladic: From Battlefield to Courtroom’ was published in November 2017, ahead of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic’s war crimes verdict.