Bringing to an end the week-long Summer School in Croatia, participants pitched cross-border stories, some of which will receive funding and editorial support from BIRN.
The 14th annual BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting closed on August 24 with participants from Central and Southeastern Europe, Ukraine, Georgia and Uzbekistan pitching investigative story ideas to BIRN editors.
A total of 19 pitches were submitted, focussing mainly on cross-border issues. BIRN editors will select the best for funding, editorial support and mentoring.
Blake Morrison, the Summer School’s lead trainer and investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, said it was “exciting to hear the ideas and to see the collaboration of journalists from different newsrooms in different countries”.
“They’ve worked hard all week to develop powerful proposals for investigations, and I expect some great journalism as a result,” he said.
The topics included environmental neglect, organised crime and corruption and reproductive rights.
On Friday, the final day of training, participants heard from BIRN Albania editor-in-chief Besar Likmeta about ways of covering environmental issues, while BIRN investigations editor Apostolis Fotiadis talked about how to secure the best possible impact.
Over the week-long course in Mlini, on the Croatian coast, some 35 participating journalists heard from 15 trainers on a range of issues relevant to investigative journalism, from digital security to artificial intelligence, visual storytelling to covering war crimes, as well as how to best protect their mental health while on the job.
BIRN’s regional director, Milka Domanovic, thanked all the participants for their hard work and expressed her hope that they will continue collaborating “even after the school ends”.
“The Summer School is not only about polishing and learning new skills, but it is also about establishing long-lasting professional connections.”
The penultimate day of teaching at BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting focussed on pitching and visual storytelling, after picking up Wednesday’s thread of mental wellbeing and advanced data journalism.
Jakub Gornicki, reporter and co-founder of visual storytelling platform Outriders, explained to the participants the process involved in creating engaging stories.
“Journalism does not have to be boring, so we combine art and reporting skills to explain global issues,” he said, while discussing some of the platform’s work in Ukraine and other places.
Visual storytelling can offer a “new angle on already known events”, he said. “We usually post three months after something happened.”
The participants had the chance to build on Wednesday’s discussions concerning data scraping from open sources and how to use artificial intelligence for elementary coding.
Blake Morrison, lead trainer and investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, led a session on pitching stories. Journalists should not necessarily see themselves as “salesmen”, he said, but “selling the story is like selling yourself”.
“We need to anticipate that your editors will be sceptical, and that they will ask questions,” he said, so journalists should expect to be queried and to offer answers.
The day ended with a workshop on stress management led by A.X. Mino, a programme director at the Self Investigation network, a global non-profit that promotes healthy work culture in the media and communication industries.
Friday will be the last day of workshops before participants get to pitch their story ideas on Saturday.
Among the more than 30 participating reporters are Anastasia Galimova and Yuriy Park, thanks to a partnership between BIRN and the Network for Border Crossing Journalism, N-ost, and its Spheres of Influence Uncovered project bringing together journalists from seven countries across Eurasia in covering the impact of international economic cooperation.
“After the lectures, I got even more inspiration to work and investigate,” Galimova said on Day Four of the week-long course in Mlini, near Dubrovnik on Croatia’s Adriatic coast.
“Also it is a good experience to meet many colleagues from different countries because most of the time I work remotely and online. It is a great opportunity for me to talk with so many investigative journalists and hear their experiences and to know what is happening in different parts of the world.”
One notable difference the Uzbek journalists noticed was the level of transparency in other countries.
“We heard during the BIRN summer school that, for example, when a journalist in Sweden asks for some documents, the government gives it to them,” said Park. “It is much harder to get that kind of document in our country. Another problem is the safety of journalists.”
Park said he had been “inspired” by a talk by Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko as well as lead trainer Blake Morrison and, from Sweden, the investigative journalists Ali Fegan and Maria Georgieva.
“I see how they treat their job and how it is done on a very high level,” Park said.
Every year, participants in the Summer School have the opportunity to work on investigative, cross-border stories with the support of experienced BIRN editors.
Park and Galimova said they already had some ideas.
“We have already talked with some of our colleagues and shared some ideas,” Galimova told BIRN. “For me, it is crucial to find collaboration outside of the Central Asia region. We have seen here that we have a lot of topics similar to those of the Balkan countries, for example, Chinese investments. We’ve talked with our colleagues and we have found the same patterns.”
Park said he was new to cross-border collaboration.
“We didn’t have any cooperation with colleagues from the Balkans, but as we are developing our ideas we are seeing some connection between Uzbekistan and Balkan and we want to explore it,” he said. “There are many issues that we can only cover through cross-border cooperation so it is a great opportunity and we are looking forward to doing that.”
BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Journalism continued with interview tips and tactics, insight into the benefits of new technologies and advice on staying well while on the job.
Day Three of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting began on Wednesday with a session dedicated to the secrets of a good interview before considering the benefits of new technologies and the challenge of protecting mental health.
Authenticity, preparation and “knowing your subject” are key to conducting a good interview, lead trainer and Reuters investigative projects editor Blake Morrison told the more than 30 participants in Mlini, Croatia.
“These people don’t know us, and we have to maintain a certain level of distance from them, we can’t be their friends,” he said. “Sometimes we have to convince them that they want to be interviewed by us.”
BIRN’s 14th Summer School brings together journalists from across Central and Eastern Europe for a week of insight and advice from 15 trainers.
Drawing on years of personal experience, Morrison urged the participants to think about “what makes your friends tell you their secrets” and to approach every interview as if they are interviewing themselves. He stressed the need for “confidence, honesty, curiosity and genuine interest in the people and topic”.
Digital infrastructure experts Boris Budini and Redon Skikuli of CryptoParty Tirana continued the day with a workshop looking at the benefits of technology in journalism.
“The intersection of technology and journalism helps us to protect ourselves and our sources, but also to use available tech to do our research and expose abuse of power,” Budini said.
The tech duo treated the participants to a list of tips and tricks in navigating open source intelligence, advanced use of search engines and the filtering of data.
The day continued with parallel group sessions on advanced data journalism, digital security and how to search the dark web. The day ended with workshops on mental health.
During the second day of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting, participants had a chance to gain insights into forming and running an investigation and the challenges posed by artificial intelligence.
Journalists with the Swedish public broadcaster, Maria Georgieva and Ali Fegan, shared details about a TV programme focusing on investigative journalism called Mission Investigate and how they create the story from start to finish.
Georgieva said that when forming the idea “it is all about asking the right questions in the beginning”.
The Scandinavian team broadcasts around 35 investigations each year. They said they receive “30,000-40,000 emails with tips and ideas” each year, of which almost all are processed by the team.
“We are still one of the few PBS services that have a landline which you can call,” Fegan said.
Fegan and Georgieva shared details on the story selection process, how to “bulletproof” the idea, and how to make sure that the story is completed.
“Most of the stories we do are reporter-driven, which means that they first of all have to have a ‘spark’ for the story. Then we have the demand of the audience, and the rest is what we as a group decide deserves to be investigated,” Fegan added.
Lead trainer Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, continued the day with a session on generating story ideas and how to investigate specific topics and areas.
As Morrsion said that “generating ideas is the hardest”, before explaining his process of finding a good story, sharing tips and tricks from his fruitful career.
“Consider how to integrate these tips into your work schedule,” he said, adding that one of the most important steps is to gain an editor’s support in writing the story, but also their encouragement to help you succeed with the story.
“You need to be your best advocate by developing greater expertise in your beat and by changing your line of sight to look for bigger, more impactful stories. This will make you indispensable,” Morrison added.
Professor in data journalism at Columbia University Journalism School, Jonathan Soma, gave a workshop on how to navigate the challenges of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in journalism. Soma warned many AI tools had what he called “a three percent hallucination rate” whereby they make up or construct a certain amount of content, even when working with predetermined text or documents.
Soma’s session also looked at large language models, or LLMs. He said they “are flawed at everything they do, and it’s only by a strange, strange accident that we find them to be useful.”
Soma emphasised that AI tools can and should be used, “but only for error-resilient tasks.”
Georgieva and Fegan ended the day by sharing their personal experiences in running months-long cross-border investigations, sharing tips and tricks on how to approach such a task.
The latest edition of BIRN’s summer school brings together almost 35 journalists from across Central and Eastern Europe for a week of investigative reporting training with a focus on collaborative, cross-border stories.
BIRN kicked off the 14th edition of its Summer School of Investigative Reporting on Monday on the Croatian coast with insight and advice shared by experienced and award-winning journalists.
The week-long summer school in Mlini, near Dubrovnik, brings together almost 35 participants from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland in polishing their skills in investigative journalism and mastering new ones.
Opening the event, BIRN regional director Milka Domanovic said the selection process was “becoming harder each year”.
“We would like to wish you a successful week and invite you to take this opportunity to master and learn new skills and to network with each other,” Domanovic said.
The participants began hearing from some of the 15 trainers who will present their insights into investigative journalism techniques, digital security, artificial intelligence, visual storytelling, investigating war crimes and how to take care of mental wellbeing on the job.
Lead trainer Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, said he hoped the participants will leave the school “inspired”.
“Inspired, first of all, to do cross-border investigative journalism and master their skills,” he said. “Also, our goal is to inspire them to connect with each other, as they can learn from themselves without any trainer’s input.”
After a session with Morrison on creativity in investigative journalism, BIRN editors Ivana Jeremic and Kreshnik Gashi talked about covering online gender-based violence and how to have an impact.
Jeremic said preparation and planning is key, “as we have to provide accurate information and avoid sensationalism and victim blaming”.
The narrative, she said, should centre on “survivors’ experience, needs and perspectives”.
Gashi shared the experiences of BIRN Kosovo in reporting on gender-based violence, including the harassment endured by one of its journalists after her phone number was leaked in a Telegram group.
“She had hundreds of calls and more than 1,000 messages in less than an hour,” Gashi said.
Seven people were arrested as a consequence of a BIRN investigation into a group in which users shared derogatory videos, ‘deep fake’ images and the personal information of women.
Elena Kostyuchenko, an independent Russian journalist and civil rights activist, talked about investigating human rights abuses and the challenges of covering the events since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The first day ended with tips and tricks on digital security for journalists shared by Monika Kutri, a journalist safety specialist with the Croatian Journalists’ Association.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network said it will not take down reports about convicted Turkish fraudster Yasam Ayavefe and described an order from a Turkish court to remove the articles as an attack on media freedom.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) said on Thursday that Balkan Insight articles about Yasam Ayavefe will remain online, and described attempts by the convicted fraudster to remove the articles via the Turkish courts as an attempt to silence the truth.
BIRN received an official request on August 7 from the Access Providers Association, a private legal entity that implements court-ordered website access-blocking decisions in Turkey, to remove six about Ayavefe published by Balkan Insight in 2022 and 2023.
The Access Providers Association cited decisions by a court in Nizip in Gaziantep province after a complaint filed by Ayavefe’s lawyers claiming that the articles were not in the public interest.
The articles listed by Ayavefe’s lawyers “do not contribute to the public interest, are not newsworthy, and in this case the requested content should be evaluated within the scope of the right to be forgotten”, the court said on August 7 as it ordered the deletion of the articles within four hours.
Milka Domanovic, BIRN’s regional director, said that the articles will not be deleted and described the attempt by Ayavefe’s lawyers to have them removed via the courts as unacceptable pressure on independent media.
“BIRN stands behind its previous articles about Yasam Ayavefe and refuses to delete them. They are based on facts. Trying to take down our articles in various ways represents an attack on press freedom and attempted online censorship,” said Domanovic.
“Since the publication of an investigation by BIRN’s flagship publication Balkan Insight in 2022, we have been subjected to cyberattacks, fake copyright claims and requests from Ayavefe to delete these articles, and finally we have received a Turkish court order to delete them,” Domanovic added.
She noted that Turkish courts have no jurisdiction over BIRN as a media house based outside Turkey.
“We will not delete those articles for the sake of press freedom and solidarity with our colleagues in Turkey who face online censorship on a daily basis,” she added.
The court also ordered the takedown of a news article published by Free Web Turkey, a platform established by the Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA to monitor online censorship.
The article explained how Ayavefe has used the courts to block online content including official material published by the Turkish police about him. The MLSA article also mentioned BIRN’s case.
Ali Safa Korkut from the MLSA told BIRN that the court decision is a clear example of how the courts are used for censorship.
“This is a tragi-comedy. In Turkey, a person who was subject to an international [Interpol] red notice issued by the Turkish authorities contacted those same Turkish authorities again to block access to posts on official websites and social media accounts,” Korkut explained.
Repeated cyberattacks on BIRN
Illustration: Spoovio
In September 2022, BIRN’s Balkan Insight website and the website of its Greek partner media outlet Solomon came under DDoS attack after the publication of an investigation into how Ayavefe – despite being convicted by a Turkish court in 2017 of defrauding online gamblers and arrested in Greece in 2019 trying to cross the border into Bulgaria on a false passport – got honorary Greek citizenship.
Ayavefe has managed to get hundreds of pieces of online content in Turkey taken down under three court orders. The content that was removed included news articles, social media posts and even the official Turkish Police website material and social media posts.
Ayavefe’s representative in July 2023 also asked for the removal of BIRN’s articles and offered financial incentives in return for compliance. “My client Dr Yasam Ayavefe has an advertising company, if you help us in this case we can provide advertising services to your organisation, so you can grow to a bigger organisation. We would love to cooperate with you,” the representative wrote.
BIRN rejected the offer and repeated demands to remove the articles about Ayavefe.
Following this, BIRN received dozens of copyright infringement complaints via a hosting company that leases out servers, submitted by different people and websites.
The complaints claimed that they originally published the BIRN articles; however, the alleged authors had merely republished the BIRN articles, by changing the dates. BIRN reported these fake copy rights claims and none of the BIRN’s articles on Ayavefe was removed by hosting companies.
BIRN’s website was hit by another DDoS attack in December 2023 after it published news about the false copyright claims over two of its articles concerning Ayavefe. DDoS attacks aim to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network.
The Border Graves Investigation, a major cross-border journalism project that included Barbara Matejcic’s story for BIRN about refugee deaths in Croatia, is among ten shortlisted nominees for the annual IJ4EU Impact Award.
The Border Graves Investigation, a cross-border project that confirmed over 1,000 unmarked graves of migrants over the last ten years across Europe, has been shortlisted for the IJ4EU Impact Award, organised by Investigative Journalism for Europe, a fund that supports cross-border watchdog journalism in and around the European Union.
One of the stories produced as part of the Border Graves was Barbara Matejcic’s investigation ‘Nomen Nescio: Dying En Route to Europe, Buried Without a Name’, which was published on BIRN’s flagship outlet Balkan Insight.
“People are losing their lives in various ways trying to reach the European Union. Our team of eight freelance journalists in the countries on the external borders of the European Union wanted to investigate how these deaths occur, especially when they are the result of the EU border regime – pushbacks and police violence in Croatia, for example,” said Matejcic.
“We investigated what happens to the bodies, what is the identification process, burial and whether the families find out what happened to their loved ones. We worked for six months in Greece, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland and Lithuania,” she added.
During their work on this investigation, the team found out there was little information and a lot of ambiguity about unidentified dead migrants, and they came across a lot of obstacles.
“There is no official data at the national levels let alone a unique EU database of dead and missing persons. That’s why we did a lot of fieldwork visiting cemeteries and collecting data,” explained Matejcic.
“Also, we exposed that identification is often incomplete and information about the deceased is difficult to obtain for relatives, which is why many never find out what happened to their loved ones and where their burial place is,” she added.
The project’s cross-border team confirmed 1,015 unmarked graves of migrants in 65 cemeteries buried over the last ten years across Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Poland, Lithuania, France, and Croatia.
The IJ4EU Impact Award award honours excellence in collaborative journalism in Europe. An independent jury chaired by Maltese journalist Paul Caruana Galizia will choose three winning teams.
Winners will be announced on September 26, at the end of IJ4EU’s UNCOVERED Conference, hosted this year by the iMEdD International Journalism Forum in Athens, Greece. Each winner will receive 5,000 euros.
The project focuses on enhancing newsrooms in the Western Balkans and Visegrad regions to engage citizens in reporting by using a digital audience engagement tool. This tool will crowdsource information from citizens and produce stories of local importance, attracting new and diverse audiences, including women, young people, and marginalised groups.
Summary
Media Innovation Europe is being implemented in 10 countries across the Visegrad and Western Balkans regions. The project aims to support independent media outlets in their efforts to engage different communities in reporting. It seeks to foster collaboration and partnership, promote media freedom and integrity, and encourage media outlets to serve as watchdogs, thereby promoting active citizenship. Communities play an essential role in shaping media content and amplifying diverse voices, including women, young people, marginalised groups, and ethnic minorities. Fifteen selected media outlets will learn to capture citizens’ engagement using BIRN’s digital tool and prepare impactful stories with the support of mentors.
Donor
European Commission, Creative Europe
Main Activities
Audience Engagement:
Grant funding for audience engagement and content production support.
Training in audience engagement for selected media outlets.
Mentoring support for the production of audience engagement content and cross-border collaborative stories for journalists.
Access to BIRN’s tool for audience engagement for journalists and media outlets.
Production of stories based on audience engagement using BIRN’s tool.
Support for Media Innovation Festivals for media practitioners, entrepreneurs, and leaders on trends and innovations.
Target Groups
Independent media outlets in the Western Balkans and Visegrad countries.
In 2009, Besar received the CEI/SEEMO Award for Outstanding Merits in Investigative Journalism and in 2010 he was runner-up for the Global Shining Light Award, presented at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva. Besar studied philosophy at the University of North Florida.
He has been editor of BIRN Albania since 2007 and is the country correspondent for Balkan Insight. He’s also a mentor in the Western Balkans Media for Change project. Find out more about this important role in strengthening Albania’s media landscape.
What type of support do you offer media outlets?
The support we offer to partner local media outlets includes all the stages of designing and implementing an Engaged Community Reporting (ECR) program. This ranges from the design and planning of activities to the selection of reporting topics, technical and editorial expertise for the drafting of effective questionnaires, call outs for distribution planning, data analysis and visualization, storytelling and editing.
What does the mentorship process look like?
Our mentorship process is designed to provide knowledge-sharing and know-how between BIRN editors and mentors and Western Balkans Media for Change implementing partners, working closely with journalists and editors in local newsrooms. The mentoring process is based on BIRN’s built experience in supporting newsrooms in implementing ECR programs and is also continuously updated with the data – the responses and the experiences we crowdsource from each partner newsroom every month. Mentorship involves continuous in-person and online communication with journalists and editors, lessons learned analysis on thematic call-outs and published stories, videos, reels and podcasts.
What were the biggest successes achieved through this type of mentorship?
As mentors, we collect data on what works and what does not work in Citizens Engagement Reporting and share it with our partners. This in turn arms them with the practical ability to engage diverse communities – from cancer patients to beach dwellers – in their reporting in order to produce rich, data-driven and compelling storytelling for their media. Our biggest success through this mentorship program has been the engagement generated from some of the implementing partners, which has exceeded expectations – and the excitement of journalists and editors to use the ECR tool.
What reactions did you receive from the media outlets supported through this process?
Most media outlets are surprised how well the ECR tool works and are glowing from the response in reaching diverse communities and the possibility of engaging them in their reporting, which builds up trust between the media outlets and its readers.
The Western Balkans Media for Change project is funded by the UK government and implemented by the British Council in partnership with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Thomson Foundation and The International NGO Training and Research Centre, INTRAC.
