Tag: Hub

The training course, held in Perast in Montenegro, introduced the participants to the various categories and types of abuses, manipulations and violations.

The second part of the training course was dedicated to brainstorming with BIRN journalists on upcoming regional in-depth investigations into digital rights and information warfare.

In June, BIRN began cooperation with SHARE Foundation in order to determine who are the main players involved in disinformation and propaganda campaigns in Southern and Eastern Europe.

Share Foundation told the course participants in detail about their expertise and standardised rules for categorising digital violations, while BIRN’s editors presented them with BIRN’s editorial policy and guidelines on journalistic standards to help ensure the quality of future stories.

The monitors learned about the methods used for online attacks, and how to distinguish various types of violations, such as information security breaches, information privacy and personal data breaches, pressures exerted because of statements and activities on the internet and manipulations and propaganda in the digital environment.

The cases collected by the monitors will be filed in a newly-created database which was presented during the training course. Continuous monitoring of digital threats and reporting on digital freedom violations will be carried out in accordance with detailed methodology and guidelines based on SHARE Foundation’s know-how and expertise.

Over a period of one year, the monitors will collect information in order to provide facts about digital violations and also to emphasise the use of technology to highlight social issues in countries that are targeted.

The database will be part of the broader online BIRN Investigative Resource Desk (BIRD) and will contain a description of each case and its corresponding sources.

The European Court of Human Rights has asked both the Serbian government and a BIRN staffer, Sofija Todorovic, for more explanation, after she submitted a complaint to it about right-wingers who had targeted her online.

The court called on both sides to submit additional information and clarification by July 5.

Her lawyer called it a milestone. “This is the first time the European Court of Human Rights took into the consideration a case of online persecution in Serbia, defending human rights defenders,” Mihailo Pavlovic, who is representing Todorovic, told BIRN.

He noted that the court had raised the question of whether Serbia had any mechanisms to protect people from being targeted online.

In its letter copied to Todorovic on June 28, the court asked the Serbian government to send additional documents and explain what protective measure it had taken in this case, and whether it had assessed the level of risk to Todorovic’s safety.

It also asked the government to explain under which statutory conditions persons who have been threatened on social networks obtain police protection in Serbia.

Serbian right-wingers launched a concerted campaign against the BIRN project coordinator after she reported on the plight of an ethnic Albanian baker who was being targeted in her hometown.

She then herself became a target, receiving hate speech, insults and threats on social media coupled by attempts to hack her account on Twitter.

Todorovic took the matter to the Serbian police on May 6, and one day later she informed Serbia’s Special Prosecution for Cyber Crime. After submitting several complaints that elicited no reaction, Todorovic’s lawyer, Pavlovic, filed a complaint about the work of the Prosecution to the Court of Appeal.

When the Prosecution still failed to contact her, on June 24, she filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights with material.

The coordinated targeting began after Todorovic documented nationalist intimidation of an ethnic Albanian baker in Serbia called Mon Gjuraj. Nationalists first re-posted on Facebook a two-year-old picture of his cousin posing with a hand gesture in the shape of a double-headed eagle, the national symbol of Albanians.

On April 27, nationalists then gathered in front of his bakery in a Belgrade suburb, shouting slogans and playing Serbian nationalist songs. Some stuck posters proclaiming “Kosovo is Serbia” on the bakery windows, and threw a pig’s heads at the bakery – a reference to his being a Muslim. A similar event was organized again on May 4.

During the April 27 events, Todorovic was live tweeting and posting videos of the incidents.

Since then, she has received months of online threats. Right-wingers also posted videos about her, calling her insulting names, mentioning her family and re-posting old pictures that are no longer public.

It will be followed by a second workshop later in 2019, after which participants will teach courses in investigative journalism in 2020 and 2021.

The training is led by Frederic Frantz from the EBU Academy.

The training is part of an EU-funded project, “Strengthening Quality News and Independent Journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey,” carried by BIRN Hub and its partners. The overall objective of the project is to provide structural support for media freedom and media integrity in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

The three-step approach

• First, participants will attend the 3-day Training of Trainers course and will learn how to design and teach a course for professionals. If needed, simultaneous translation will be provided.
• A second workshop will help participants design courses in investigative journalism. This workshop is planned to be held in Podgorica, Montenegro.
• Participants will then be expected to teach their courses to groups of younger colleagues from their countries, once in 2020 and again in 2021. The course will last one to three days each time. Financial compensation will be provided for each of these training days.

 Practical information for prospective attendees:

• The project will cover travel and accommodation costs (if needed).
• The first training will happen in Sarajevo, from September 24 to 26 (TBC).
• The second training will be held before the end of 2019.
• Once a participant delivers his or her first course, he or she will be awarded the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Academy Trainer’s diploma.

How to apply

Send an email to [email protected] with your CV attached by 12:00 on Monday, September 2, 2019.

Download Agenda of the training

Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor at Reuters and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, is the lead trainer for the 10th annual Birn Summer School. The School will be hosted in the heart of Boka Bay at Herceg Novi and will run from August 18th to August 25th, with participants from across the Western Balkans and Europe.

In addition to Morison’s lectures, the more than 30 participants will have an opportunity to learn from some of the world’s leading editors and journalists, such as Frederick Obermaier (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Benjamin Strick (BBC Africa Eye and Bellingcat) and many more.

Since joining Reuters, Morrison has overseen and edited a variety of projects that includes two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize: The Child Exchange, an investigation of America’s underground market for adopted children, and The Echo Chamber, a special report that revealed how a handful of lawyers came to have an outsize influence at the U.S. Supreme Court. At BIRN Summer School he will reveal the secrets of interviewing to attendees, teach them how to conceive and organize an investigative project, and help them learn to imagine a story.

Frederick Obermaier, an investigative journalist for Süddeutsche Zeitung and one of the initiators and coordinators of the ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation, will teach participants how to investigate large data sets and verify leaks.

As part of the Panama Papers team he won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting; the George Polk award; the Perfil award; and the Nannen Preis, a prestigious German journalism prize. He was voted, together with his colleagues Bastian Obermayer and Vanessa Wormer, “German Journalist of the Year 2016”.

In addition to the Panama Papers, Obermaier was a part of the team that uncovered Germany’s role in the United States’s drone war. Obermaier has received numerous awards for his other work, including the CNN-Award in 2011 and the Wächterpreis der Tagespresse and Helmut Schmidt Prize in 2013.

Participants in the BIRN Summer School will also have the opportunity to study open source investigations from one of the leading researchers in the field—Benjamin Strick, an open-source investigator for BBC Africa Eye and Bellingcat. Strick, with a background in law and the military, was part of the BBC Africa Eye team that developed Anatomy of a Killing, a reconstruction of the killing of civilians in Cameroon in 2015. Anatomy of a Killing won a Peabody Award and a Webby award in the Documentary: Longform category.

BIRN’s own Ivan Angelovski and Ivana Jeremic will teach attendees how to fact check their stories and how to track ships and planes online.

Participants will also have the opportunity to learn from journalist Andrew Baker, who will show them how to visualize investigation, including using smartphones to do so. Award winning German journalist Olaf  Sundermeyer will talk about investigative documentaries focused on organized crime and political extremism.

Beyond lectures, participants will enjoy screenings and discussions of award-winning documentaries, including “Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World.”

BIRN’s Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s Media Program South East Europe.