As primarily a media organisation, we want to open space and provide a platform to discuss and reshape our alliances in light of the challenges facing democracies in South-East and Central Europe.
This effort comes at a critical time when the region is seeing several troubling trends: centralized power, reduced transparency, assaults on media, politicized judiciaries, unchecked corruption, online violations, and social polarization – all amidst heightened geopolitical tensions and deep divisions in Europe.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, the Platform B event series will be organised in accordance with all relevant health measures. As the situation improves, we hope to be able to host some of the events in BIRN spaces in Sarajevo and Belgrade, and elsewhere in the region.
Platform B will be an opportunity for individuals and groups to meet monthly on selected topics.
Next event: Resilience of local media – what can we learn from the region and beyond?
Date: January 28, 2022 (Friday)
Time: 11am-1pm, CET
Local media in the region face a number of structural problems, which have got worse since the pandemic started. The aim of this online event is to discuss the perspectives of local journalism in the Western Balkans through a discussion of media professionals from the region and the EU. During the event, we will also present an interactive publication that will hopefully become an important resource for all local media in the region.
The first part of the event aims at an exchange between media representatives and journalists from EU countries who face the same or similar problems in their work as media in the region.
Panelists that will take part in the discussion include:
Anna Petersen, editor at Landeszeitung Lüneburg, Germany
Márton Kárpáti, CEO of Telex.hu, Hungary
Brigitte Alfter, director of Arena for Journalism in Europe
The panel will be moderated by Besar Likmeta, BIRN’s editor in Albania.
The second part of the event will be dedicated to tackling specific issues related to the local media in the region. By creating room for discussion on three specific topics, we will try to reach conclusions and come up with possible solutions to some of the problems that local media face. This discussion will be moderated by Amer Bahtijar, president of Tačno.net from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Darija Ranković, editor of Kolubarske from Serbia and Ivana Petrović, editor of City Smart Radio from Serbia.
More information can be found in the agenda.
You can register for the event HERE.
This event is organized in cooperation with partner organization n-ost within the project “Local journalism – European perspectives”.