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This year’s winning investigations exposed a variety of malpractices in Turkey,  ranging from the mishandling of public funds to the infamous ties between a drug baron and a chief of police.

A total of 53 applicants submitted their stories uncovering wrongdoings and shedding light on issues of importance to the public.

Apart from the three stories that were given awards, two other stories received special recognition from the juries.

At the awards ceremony on June 29, the head of EU Delegation in Turkey, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, highlighted the importance of investigative journalism and of ensuring the safety of reporters.

“In the wake of the attack against an AFP photo-journalist, I state that according to EU values, violence against journalists cannot be tolerated. We are in need of journalism in this age of global disinformation,” Meyer-Landrut told the ceremony in Ankara.

The first prize went to journalist Murat Ağırel, whose series of stories featured how public funds are being misspent in a variety of areas such as health and education. Articles unearthed unlawful purchases and expenses as well as possible money-laundering.

Journalists Hale Gönültaş and Volkan Nakiboğlu got second prize for their stories Iranian Border: Between Bullets and Wolves, which exposed the inhumane conditions that immigrants face on the Iranian border as well as the cruelty of human traffickers.

Third prize was awarded to Fevzi Kızılkoyun for the story Prestigious Baron: Official Car Issued to Turkish Escobar,  which explained how a drug trafficker violated the curfew during the pandemic with the help of a chief of police.

“Today we are here to honour our colleagues who practise this profession by doing it justice. Journalism requires dedication, first and foremost to the public, then to the truth, knowledge, and objectivity,” said Yusuf Kanli, vice-president of the Association of Journalists.

Special recognition jury prizes went to the Hazal Ocak for the story Leak in the Bosphorus – Garden Rented for Only 258 Liras a Month, which showed how public spaces are being taken by top government officials. Ocak’s stories have been banned on the grounds that she has been “interfering with the fight against coronavirus” and she is facing 14 years in prison at an ongoing trial.

Another special recognition prize was awarded to İsa Örken for the story 14 Days as a Seasonal Worker, about the hardship faced by seasonal workers, their poor working conditions and how they try to get by on low salaries. Örken went undercover and worked alongside seasonal workers, documenting their working conditions.

The EU Award for Investigative Journalism is presented annually in six Western Balkan countries and Turkey for exceptional investigations published in the previous year.

The Summer School of Investigative Reporting, which will be held this year in Croatia’s picturesque coastal village of Mlini from August 23-30, will again put together top journalists and editors for a week-long training programme.

Due to the global pandemic, BIRN has changed its usual programme in order to ensure that health and safety measures are respected. This year’s hybrid programme will include both online and offline sessions.

This year, BIRN is teaming up with journalists and trainers from Lighthouse Reports, an award-winning non-profit organisation based in the Netherlands which leads complex transnational investigations blending traditional journalistic methods with emerging techniques like open source intelligence and specialisms like data science.

For the first time this summer, applicants will have the chance to choose one of four course themes: Arms, Surveillance, Agriculture and Waste. Part of the training programme will be focused on the three themes that attract most interest from the participants.

In the mornings, participants will have joint sessions in hands-on investigative journalism skills, such as open source techniques, financial forensics and data journalism.

In the afternoon sessions, participants will be divided into three groups, depending on the theme they are following. Each group will have its lead trainers and will work with them on specific investigations, covering their group’s topic, applying the skills and techniques acquired during the morning sessions. Specific ideas and story angles, as well as the materials needed, will be prepared prior to the Summer School and participants will receive them during a briefing on the first day.

Work on the investigations is expected to be finalised during the Summer School, with only minor final work to be left for afterwards. Journalists from other media outlets are encouraged to co-publish the investigations originate at the Summer School.

The agenda and a detailed list of trainers will be published in the coming weeks.

We are providing 30 full scholarships for selected participants. This will cover accommodation, meals, as well as transportation expenses of up to 150 euros. Apart from the training, editorial support and mentorship, BIRN will, through our Investigative Initiative Fund, provide participants with fees.

Eligible participants include journalists who have experience in investigative reporting and who have covered the course theme they have chosen. Journalists from the following countries are eligible to apply: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Turkey.

Journalists who had previously participated in our Summer Schools are again eligible to apply.

Since the first Summer School in 2010, BIRN has trained more than 300 journalists from the Balkans and beyond, providing them with financial, editorial, mentorship and publication support. The participants, who are usually a mixture of experienced investigative journalists and those who have only a few years of experience in the field, are also provided with excellent opportunities for networking.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, there is a possibility that some trainers will not be able to come to Croatia, so they will join us online via Zoom. BIRN also aims to undertake all the necessary preventive and protection measures and will inform the participants of COVID-19 related rules and procedures. In case the offline setting is not possible, school will most likely take place online.

The application procedure includes sending a completed application form and CV as well as a sample of your work.

Applications close on July 7.

Click here to apply.

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The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN on June 3 launched the first comprehensive, interactive database of mass graves from the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia, giving an unprecedented insight into the largest operations to cover up war crimes in Europe since World War II.

The Bitter Land database provides information in three languages (English, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Albanian) on the location of mass graves from the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo, including the number of victims identified after exhumations, archive reports and images, plus details of related court cases, witness testimonies and other resources.

It is being launched ahead of the final verdict on June 8 in the trial of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, who stands accused of bearing responsibility for some of the crimes that led to mass graves being dug during the Bosnian conflict.

BIRN’s aim is to present factual data in order to help counter the continuing selective denial of crimes and historical revisionism about the 1990s wars.

“One of the main focuses was to create a source of fact-based information and data on one of the biggest systematic cover-ups of war crimes in recent history,” said Nejra Mulaomerovic, who created the project with BIRN’s regional director, Marija Ristic.

“The database also represents an effort to foster the memorialisation process by providing a significant number of resources and using new technologies to capture current state of these sites,” she added.

The database highlights the lack of strategic memorialisation efforts by providing drone videos and photographs of the current condition of the locations, and in some cases 3D models of the sites, many of which are neglected an unmarked, with no signs indicating that they were wartime crime scenes.

The database is designed for use by journalists, researchers, students, civil society organisations and, most importantly, for the families of war victims with limited resources to access court records, archives and information related to clandestine graves in the region.

At the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, BIRN visited and documented more than 60 mass grave locations.

Most of the gravesites in the database are in unmarked fields, illegal garbage pits, next to public roads or on the property of private companies. In some cases, the sites were hidden as new housing was built around them.

Initial research for the launch of the database was based on the 42 largest mass graves in the former Yugoslavia that yielded more than 100 bodies. In the second phase of research, BIRN will map graves that contained between 50 and 100 bodies, while the third phase will map the remaining sites.

The biggest mass grave in the region was in Serbia, at a police training centre in the Belgrade neighbourhood of Batajnica, where 744 bodies of Kosovo Albanians were found.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the biggest gravesites were discovered around the towns of Zvornik, Srebrenica and Prijedor, where the bodies of Bosniak civilians were buried. One of the biggest gravesites in Croatia was discovered near Ovcara farm, near the town of Vukovar, where 200 bodies were found.

More than 130,000 people lost their lives as a consequence of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and 40,000 went missing. So far remains of around 28,000 people have been found in more than 1,500 clandestine gravesites, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone, around 1,000 gravesites have been uncovered.

As sources for the database, BIRN used forensic reports from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, court testimony statements and archive satellite footage, as well as documents, research papers, testimonies and news archive footage from different sources.

BIRN also cross-referenced data from the ICTY, the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other organisations that were involved in the process of exhuming and identifying the victims.

The database provides a wide-ranging insight into the killings and subsequent cover-up operations – many of which remain unpunished, more than two decades later.

For more information, see the Bitter Land site.

Trends Report highlights how symptoms of “Long COVID” in Central and Southeast Europe include assaults on transparency and media freedom, infectious disregard for the rule of law, and ideological entrenchment and polarisation.

Governments in Central and Southeast are taking advantage of the pandemic to continue their assault on democratic values and the still-fragile system of checks and balances, Reporting Democracy, a cross-border journalistic platform run by BIRN, warns in its annual Trends Report published on Wednesday.

“While Long COVID symptoms in people include extreme tiredness, shortness of breath, chest pain, and problems with memory; symptoms for countries in this region include assaults on transparency and media freedom, infectious disregard for the rule of law, ideological entrenchment and polarisation, and problems with memory,” the report, COVID’s Lingering Effects, says.

Marking the second year of the Reporting Democracy initiative, the report highlights the key “signals to watch” and “what to expect in 2021” as the political, economic and social consequences of the coronavirus crisis continue to unfold.

The report seeks to examine the political and social implications of the pandemic that has exacerbated some pre-existing trends, like assaults on media freedom and eroding of the rule of law, that were also covered in the inaugural edition of the Trends Report. It also identifies some new ones, including the vaccine dimension to disinformation, misinformation and propaganda; the return of rising poverty in the region, and the destruction of the cultural economy by COVID-19 and government partiality over the financial aid provided to it.

“The European Commission called the pandemic a ‘real-life stress test’ for our legal and constitutional systems – and in many regards they are failing. The Trends Report is part of our effort to unleash the power of independent journalism to explore the issues, trends and events that are shaping the future of democracy in Central and Southeast Europe,” Reporting Democracy Editor Nicholas Watson said.

The Trends Report streams from the regular coverage of the most important developments in the Visegrad region, provided by the Reporting Democracy correspondents, grants for in-depth features and investigations available to local journalists and the expert commentary from leaders in policy, civil society and academia.

If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’, now is the time to submit your ideas for investigative articles in the public interest related to the EU integration process. The candidates with the best proposals will undergo a training, which will be held in Montenegro at the end of April 2021.

The training will be followed by a selection process. Three candidates with the best ideas, journalistic skills and knowledge will implement their investigative projects, with a close supervision and mentoring of the editorial team from the country and the region.

After completion of the investigation, all stories will be published at the websites of CIN-CG and BIRN, as well as in a special bilingual publication and e-book.

All journalists from Montenegro who have interest and experience in investigative journalism are eligible to apply. Apart from the training, mentoring and editorial support, the selected applicants will receive € 1,000 bursary for their stories (reduced by approximately 9% tax).

Applications should be submitted by March 26th, 2021 to: konkurscincg@gmail.com and to assistantcincg@gmail.com. The application form is available online HERE.

Should you have any additional questions, please send them to: konkurscincg@gmail.com or assistantcincg@gmail.com.

The programme, now in its 15^th year, provides a 3,000-euro bursary and sustained editorial support to journalists seeking to report in depth on the forces shaping societies and democracies across 14 countries in Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe. The Fellowship emphasises strong storytelling and rigorous, on-the-ground reporting – skills traditionally associated with the best magazine journalism.

The deadline for this year’s entries is 9 April 2021. As usual, applications are solicited under an annual theme. This year’s theme is Transformation. Fellowship editor Neil Arun said the theme gave journalists “a chance to pitch a story that probed the changes that had been set in motion, or that had gathered pace, over the past year.”

The annual selection of 10 journalist Fellows is made by an independent committee. The Fellows are mentored by the programme editor in the course of their reporting, and can also draw on the support of BIRN’s regional network of journalists. In addition to financial and editorial support, the Fellowship offers:

• The chance to participate in an introductory seminar focused on reporting and storytelling techniques
• The chance to win additional awards, worth between 3.000 and 1.000 euros, for the three best stories
• Publication of finished stories in regional languages and in English, through BIRN’s network of media partners
• Membership of the Fellowship alumni network, designed to support networking between journalists who have participated in the programme

This year’s call is open until April 9th. Please send us your proposal using the official application form.
To maximize your chances of a successful application read more about the programme including the tips from our editors.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and ERSTE Foundation set up the Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence in 2007.

Since then, more than 140 journalists from 14 countries in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe have taken part in the Fellowship’s world-class programme for professional development.

Since 2020, the Fellowship has been accepting applications from journalists in the Visegrad group of countries, as well as from the Balkans.

Applications can be made by downloading the official form. Journalists who wish to maximise their chances of a successful application can read these tips from our editors and check out the latest stories on the Fellowship homepage. 

For more information, please contact us on fellowship@birn.eu.com