BIRN Serbia News and Events

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is issuing a statement after Johannes Hahn, the European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiation, said he could not react to claims about media freedom violations in Serbia without seeing proof. BIRN is sending its response to all relevant human rights organisations, EU diplomats and international journalists.

Panellists and guests at the ‘Free the media’ debate concluded that in times of financial hardship and other pressures, journalists must unite against new forms of censorship.

The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia, NUNS, has announced that BIRN Serbia had received Jug Grizelj Award for investigative journalism for 2014.

Belgrade Business School is illegally organising classes in at least twenty cities and municipalities throughout Serbia, and the state has no means to prevent it, according to a new investigation conducted by BIRN Serbia.

A BIRN Serbia debate was told that the Business Registers Agency must do more to protect the identities of investigative journalists using its archive to prevent them from being tracked and targeted.

Project financing is the way best way to distribute budget funds for the media – but the task will be a tough one, a BIRN conference on the New Media Economy heard in Belgrade on October 31.

BIRN Serbia held a public debate on the prospects of new models of budgetary financing for the media with NGO and media representatives in Novi Pazar, southwest Serbia.

The key conclusion from the debate in Belgrade on Tuesday was that the recently-published EU Progress Report on Serbia was not too hard on the Serbian government, but it does not mention many problems and some of the conclusions and recommendations are identical to the 2013 Progress Report.

The biggest issue local media in Serbia are facing is a lack of knowledge about project financing and lack of budgetary transparency in allocating money to media outlets, two debates held by BIRN Serbia in Nis and Kragujevac heard. Media representatives said they hoped that some of the problems would be resolved by full implementation of new Media and Public Information Law.  

The pro-government tabloid ‘Informer’ has published a series of allegations about the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, following its investigation into a secret government contract with the UAE’s Etihad Airways.

Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic promised to publish the text of a previously confidential deal between Serbia and United Arab Emirates airline company Etihad Airways on Friday, a day after BIRN Serbia published an article revealing the content of the agreements that appear unfavourable for the country.

In its first 100 days, the Serbian government has only fulfilled a handful of the tasks it set itself when taking office, a new report by BIRN shows.

The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia and the US Embassy in Belgrade have awarded BIRN journalists Slobodan Georgiev and Aleksandar Djordjevic the 2014 prize for investigative journalism in the print media category.

BIRN Serbia journalists Ana Novakovic, Slobodan Georgiev and Aleksandar Djordjevic have been named as finalists for the National Investigative Journalism Award 2014 by the Independent Association of Journalists in Serbia.

‘Soft Censorship: Strangling Serbia’s Media’, a piece of research conducted by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), in cooperation with the Center for International Media Assistance – CIMA, is published today and will be presented at the ‘Media Freedom and Accession talks – Speak Up! Serbia’ conference in Brussels.