BIRN Serbia Launches ‘Info-Hub’ to Aid Civil Society

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New website will contain documents relevant to budget spending in the media and hopefully serve as a valuable resource for the media, civil society and other stakeholders interested in use of public money.

BIRN Serbia, the Independent Journalists’Association of Serbia and Slavko Curuvija Foundation launched new website – kazitrazi.rs, as part of the joint project Public Money for the Public Interest.

All materials created within the project, such as handouts, manuals, case studies, multimedia, articles, etc, will be available on this website.

The info-hub will also contain documents relevant to budgetary spending in the media sector, data collected by the Research Team and reports produced over the course of the project.

“Tracing public money in Serbian media sector is of special importance as this money, for most of the local media, is the main source of survival,” said Tanja Maksic, program coordinator of BIRN Serbia.

“Partisan and non-transparent allocation leads to corrupt practices and abuse of public funds. In the long run, it diminishes fair competition and pushes media towards propaganda, rather than reporting in the public interest,” she added.

“That is why it is highly important to have effective monitoring tools as well as to engage the broader civil society community in this issue.”

The info-hub is envisaged as a resource center for all interested stakeholders, particularly in civil society, and as a unique platform where all relevant data can be easily accessed.

The website will be updated regularly through the duration of the entire project and will hopefully serve as valuable information source for all stakeholders interested in this topic.