Tag: Hub

Grants are offered to ten journalists to cover topics related to truth, justice, accountability, memory, institutional reform and other issues related to dealing with the past. The selected journalists will receive mentoring by experienced editors.

The call is a part of the Balkan Transitional Justice Initiative project, financed by the European Commission.

The project’s aim is to strengthen in-depth reporting on transitional justice in the Balkans, in order to contribute to a more informed citizenry that is engaged in the democratic process.

Ten journalists will be awarded €1,000 grants to cover their expenses while conducting investigations and writing their stories on transitional justice issues.

The journalists will have around three months to dig deeper and research their ideas, and will also have the opportunity to work with experienced editors as mentors to guide them through the process of writing in accordance with BIRN standards.

The call applies to journalists from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania.

All further information regarding application process can be found in our application guidelines.

To apply, send the following documents to [email protected] with the subject “Balkan Transitional Justice Initiative grant application” by November 19^th:

• Resume (CV)
• Letter of motivation
• Completed application form 
• Link to or copy of example of published work
• Any other relevant documents

A three-day regional investigative reporting workshop for journalists from public broadcasters in the Western Balkans, organised by BIRN Hub, started in Belgrade on Friday with a visit to Radio Television of Serbia, RTS.

The workshop is a part of the project “Technical Assistance to Public Service Media in the Western Balkans”, financed by the European Union, which aims to revitalise the region’s public broadcasting sector and bring new confidence to the key stakeholders involved.

EU ambassador to Serbia Sem Fabrizi, who delivered the opening address of the training, highlighted that media freedom is of fundamental importance to a democratic society.

He noted that public service broadcasters play a special role in responding to public interest for information in today’s challenging media environment.

“The media landscape is changing – we now have social networks, fake news; these elements call into question the freedom of the media,” Fabrizi said, adding that public service broadcasters are crucial in today’s media sector.

Dragan Bujosevic, General Director of RTS, stated during his address at the opening ceremony, that he disagrees with the term investigative journalism, but for a specific reason:

“Journalism is always investigative… there is no other type,” he said.

Aperture: 2.8
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BIRN Macedonia’s Director, Ana Petruseva, who was among the trainers for the workshop, noted: “We are seeing many challenges to investigative reporting today, and the role of public broadcasters is vitally important. Especially since we have less people in news rooms prepared to fight and look out for the public interest.”

She added that over the next three days, “we hope to give journalists tips, tricks and skills they can use to improve their reporting.”

Lead trainer Nils Hanson from the Swedish public broadcaster SVT said: “The need for investigative journalists has never been bigger than it is today,” stressing that “the work of an investigative journalist is very dangerous.”

He added that in Sweden there has been a revival of investigative journalism, with all TV stations having noticed that viewers demand it and are willing to pay for it.

The project, intended to train public broadcasters to produce increasingly pluralistic, independent and accountable content, is being led by the International Federation of Journalists, IFJ, together with BIRN, the European Broadcasting Union, EBU, the European Federation of Journalists, EFJ, the Austrian Public Broadcaster, ORF, and the Eurovision News Exchange for South-East Europe, ERNO.

The training was held as part of the project Media Investigations: Stop to READ (Regional Environmental Acts of Devastation) which aims to strengthen investigative reporting in Montenegro.

Training topics included national and international databases and registries, their importance in investigative journalism and practical instructions on how to gather data and how to use them for writing stories; freedom of information laws and how to obtain data using them; tips and tricks for browsing, and using social networks in data journalism.

The training was held by Milka Tadic-Mijovic (CIN Montenegro), Dusica Tomovic and Jelena Cosic (BIRN Hub), and Slobodan Georgiev (BIRN Serbia).

The project was funded by the EU Delegation in Podgorica.

The social media giant has removed a network of pages, whose followers total millions, tied to the Knights Templar International, KTI, BIRN reported on Thursday.

KTI – which calls itself “a living shield and sword for the defence of Christian communities and the upholding of Christian principles” – has boasted about how its vast network of social media pages helped to elect Donald Trump as US President and swing the UK referendum on leaving the European Union.

The organisation has attracted controversy for its hard-line views on Muslim immigration to Europe and donation of equipment to so-called “migrant hunters” in Bulgaria and to Kosovo Serbs preparing for confrontation with Kosovo’s mainly Muslim Albanian majority.

In May this year, BIRN and the BBC published the fruits of their collaboration into the British nationalists operating in the Balkans.

BIRN’s investigation highlighted the links between British anti-immigration hardliner Jim Dowson and a web of patriotic sites, including the KTI, which are becoming increasingly active in Serbia.

The BBC produced television and radio documentaries focusing on Dowson, “the invisible man of Britain’s far right”, and his activities in Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia and Kosovo. Read it here: Is this Britain’s most influential far-right activist?

These collaborations are part of BIRN’s Paper Trail to Better Governance programme, funded by the Austrian Development Agency.

Regional cooperation between prosecutors’ offices in former Yugoslav countries is beset by problems, despite the protocols that states have signed agreeing to collaborate on war crimes cases, said speakers at a conference organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Sarajevo on Wednesday.

“The cooperation exists in theory, but it is non-existent in practice,” Aleksandar Kontic, legal officer at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, told the conference entitled ‘After the ICTY: Regional Cooperation, Accountability, Truth and Justice in the Former Yugoslavia’.

Kontic said that the chief prosecutor at the Hague court, Serge Brammertz, has reported countries in the region to UN Security Council on several occasions due to their non-cooperation on war crime cases.

He also suggested that part of the problem was that all countries in the region still divide suspects into two categories – “our heroes and their criminals”.

The acting chief prosecutor at the Bosnian state prosecution, Gordana Tadic, said her institution wants to improve regional cooperation because some of the suspects being sought for prosecution in Bosnia and Herzegovina are living in Serbia and Croatia.

“It is important for war crime perpetrators not to remain unpunished no matter where they are,” Tadic said.

In 2013, the prosecutor’s offices of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia signed protocols enabling the free exchange of war crime cases, investigations and case documents. Despite the fact that several cases have been exchanged and processed, very few against high-ranking suspects have been successfully transferred to neighbouring countries’ jurisdictions, while numerous suspects have never been arrested or had cases brought against them.

Jurica Ilic of the County Prosecution in Zagreb pointed out that Croatia has certain legal differences that complicate cooperation with other former Yugoslav states.

“There is a problem related to existence of different standards in individual countries, which makes it impossible to take over complete cases,” Ilic said.

Croatian law does not recognise the concept of a ‘joint criminal enterprise’, and the Croatian government has ordered the country’s Justice Ministry, when reviewing cooperation requests from Bosnia, to refuse to act on any which “violate state interests” – meaning those in which Croatia is named as a participant in a joint criminal enterprise during the Bosnian conflict.

Paul Flynn, prosecution manager at the EU’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, said meanwhile that cooperation between Pristina and Belgrade on war crimes cases was almost non-existent.

“Without that, I think we shall have no justice at all,” Flynn warned.

Merita Gashi, an adviser to the Kosovo chief state prosecutor, said that Pristina and Belgrade have no legal cooperation at all because of Serbia’s refusal to recognise Kosovo’s independence.

“There are around 13,000 victims of the military conflict in Kosovo. Victims are tired of waiting. They are beginning to lose confidence,” Gashi said.

Ivan Jovanovic, an expert in international law, told the conference that former Yugoslav countries had to accelerate cooperation because as the years pass, suspects, victims and witnesses are all getting older.

“We are witnessing that victims are dying and many suspects are dying,” Jovanovic warned.

The conference continues on Thursday.

Read more:

Poor Cooperation Leaves Balkan War Crime Suspects at Large

Srebrenica Suspects Find Safe Haven in Serbia

Serbia-Kosovo Stalemate Allows Fugitives to Stay Free

The conference, organised under the umbrella of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Initiative, will discuss regional cooperation in war crimes prosecution and missing persons, victims’ participation, and the role of archives, art, media and museums in dealing with the past.

Participants from civil society, the expert community, institutions, academia and the media will try to answer the overarching questions – how far we are from reconciliation, and what more we could do to combat impunity and increase intercultural dialogue?

The conference aims to have a results-oriented approach that will be reflected in a policy paper that will be used to further influence policies on both the national and EU levels with the goal of making transitional justice one of the key areas within the framework of EU negotiations.

The working languages of the conference are English, Albanian and BCS. Simultaneous translation will be provided during the whole event.

For more information about the conference, click here.

The meetings are being held as a part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice programme, bringing together representatives of war victims’ associations and the courts, as well as NGO members, humanitarian law experts and representatives of international organisations.

At the meeting in Belgrade, the participants raised various issues concerning regional cooperation in prosecuting war crimes committed during the 1990s conflicts, such as trials of defendants in their absence, the lack of cooperation between countries’ prosecutor’s offices and the lack of political will for states to fully cooperate.

As well as raising their concerns about such problems, the participants suggested possible solutions.

This input, along with input from the meetings in Zagreb and Sarajevo and the upcoming one in Pristina in September, will be formulated into recommendations.

After all four meetings with stakeholders, one final conference will be held at the regional level in Sarajevo on October 3-4.

The recommendations from the stakeholders’ meetings and the conference will be used to create a policy paper for improving regional cooperation between states in prosecuting war crimes.

The conference brought together over hundred journalists and media professionals to discuss professional standards related to reporting on terrorism and violent extremism.

As Bruce G. Berton the head of the OSCE mission in the country noted, while news about these topics draws a lot of attention and outlets are expected to publish or air it as quickly as possible, it is up to media to avoid sensationalism in the process.

The age of social media had put even greater importance on reporting professionally and responsibly on violent extremism and terrorism.

Unnamed and non-credible sources are one of the dangers for spreading propaganda.

Adhering to ethical standards such as truthfulness, independence, objectivity, empathy and responsibility are key principles in reliable reporting about terrorism and terrorist attacks, said Aidan White, president of the Ethical Journalism Network.

Marija Ristic, BIRN’s Regional Director, who spoke about reporting on violent extremism in Serbia, stressed that media often respond to the dominant narrative in society.

Reporting on the topic in Serbia is overly tabloid with sensationalistic content, almost no sources, and often alarmist in tone, emphasising Islamic radicalization, Ristic said.

But Serbian media takes a completely different tone when reporting on Serb fighters serving with pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, when its dominant narrative is one of “support for our Russian brothers” and a “justified struggle”, she added.