Denis Dzidic joined BIRN in 2008. After working as a journalist, deputy editor and chief editor for BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina’s flagship website Detektor.ba, he was named Executive Director on October 1, 2019.
Before BIRN, Dzidic worked as a journalist for Oslobodjenje daily newspaper and for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, IWPR, both in Sarajevo and The Hague. There, he reported on transitional justice issues and war crimes. It was then, while he was starting an internship in IWPR, that he first heard about BIRN.
“It was about the time when BIRN was first being created by a group of amazing women reporters. I knew of Nerma Jelacic, and her courageous reporting on war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the legacies of the conflict. I was just starting my career after finishing university in Sarajevo. I worked at a daily newspaper for a year and wanted to try something different, so I decided to apply for an IWPR internship – and the work that Jelacic and BIRN were doing was quite inspiring,” he recalls.
Speaking of his expectations when he joined BIRN in August 2008, and whether he has met them, he says: “It’s been a way for me to ensure that transitional justice reporting, focusing on victims’ rights and marginalized groups, are at the heart of my professional life.
“Yes, it has met my expectations and has easily overpassed them. As you start in journalism in Sarajevo, it’s not easy to foresee that one day you will train journalists in warzones on war crimes reporting – that you will get to lead a group of young professionals who are dedicated to the rule of law, human rights, digital and cyber threats, and finally that you will build an archive which will be the only coherent narrative about the 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
This year, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH, was a strategic partner to the Srebrenica Memorial Centre in marking the 30th anniversary of the genocide.
It has been a hectic period that’s included working on documentaries, multimedia pages and a memorial room. There was also an exhibition of survivors’ testimonies, “From Words to Violence: Lives Behind the Fields of Death”, at UN headquarters in New York.
Dzidic explains what this means to him personally, to BIRN BiH and the whole network.
“One of the key issues Bosnia and Herzegovina as a country, and the region, face is historical revisionism, denial of war crimes and glorification of war criminals. We have seen rampant, systematic and often internationalized campaigns in the past few years to deny the Srebrenica genocide, which was confirmed by rulings of the World Court, the ICTY and domestic courts,” he recalls.
“The opportunity for BIRN BiH to contribute to this year’s commemoration with the Srebrenica Memorial Center has been the proudest moment of my professional career. It was an opportunity to utilize experience gathered over more than 20 years of work, of telling personal stories of victims, to make sure that the voices of those who survived and were killed in the genocide are precisely those whose voices are heard in Srebrenica, Sarajevo, but also at the UN in New York,” he adds.
“This year, we also opened a permanent Memorial room in Potocari, called Lives Behind Fields of Death. I can tell you how much it means to BIRN BiH only by telling you what it means to my colleagues, to the people I am honoured to work side by side with every day. Everyone who could spare a moment came to Srebrenica that day. I hope that for the network, this was a full circle – going back to what the network primarily reported about, and still does,” Dzidic says.
Many war victims tell their tragic stories to BIRN BiH’s journalists. Reporting on war crimes in Bosnia is difficult for journalists who must approach victims with caution and sensitivity. Yet, BIRN BiH’s journalists don’t hesitate to work on some of the worst stories about war crimes.
Dzidic unpacks what motivates them to continue their work, and how they cope with all these stories and the victims’ tragic fates.
“From the outset, BIRN BiH was the only news agency monitoring every hearing in every war crime case. It is part of our mission to be an agency that gives voice to those whose voice is so often unheard and degraded, who are victims of the Bosnian War,” he says.
“In terms of coping, it is not always easy. We have set up systems of support, both internally and externally, and this is not something we shy away from; it is an open discussion in our office and one we take seriously. One cannot simply listen to all the worst wartime sufferings and be immune to them. It takes its toll, but the reward of being a media of the people and for the people of this country is what gives us belief,” Dzidic adds.
Besides this, there are other obstacles that BIRN BiH must cope with in its work.
“In the past few years, we have had threats; the Sarajevo court sentenced an individual to three months in prison for threatening our newsroom; we have had SLAPP suits – one, bizarrely, was for following a trial, and we have had institutional pushback, including silence to our FOIA requests. In terms of personal work, we deal with the most complex topics, which sometimes leads to fatigue, burnout, and other related issues,” he says.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina has become a far less free place to work – one part of the country has criminalized defamation and introduced a law on foreign agents, while the other part has sought to give the right to the police to decide what is fake news, and our institutions are more and more corrupt and under political pressure.
“I wouldn’t say we have beaten any of these issues but we address them daily and keep working. We see our role to be the light of the people, to be a free voice, where they can see the truth and where their voices can be heard. That keeps us going,” Dzidic explains.
And as part of their recent focus on education, BIRN BiH recently signed a collaboration deal with the International University of Sarajevo to enhance mutual activities and information exchange.
“Namely, as a result of our 20 years’ work on transitional justice, we are trying to do more in advocacy, especially in relation to education in the country,” he says.
“The [educational] curricula on the Bosnian war are divisive and hateful, and some even contain glorifications of convicted war criminals. We are developing a database of court-determined facts and trying to prepare a handbook on how to use it to teach children about the war in a factual manner. The project is still in the early phases, but nothing is more important than factually teaching children,” Dzidic says.
Speaking of BIRN BiH’s flagship website, Detektor.ba, Denis explains why they recently decided to redesign it.
“We redesigned the website at the start of this year due to our strategic focus on having more multimedia outputs. Basically, we are the only media NGO producing two monthly TV shows. We also have other video materials just for the website and social media, such as explainers and short videos. These significantly increase our reach, especially among younger audiences,” Dzidic says.
He sees BIRN continuing its growth and cementing its role as a leading media watchdog fighting for the everyday rights of the region’s people.
“Without media support for factual reporting and without a voice for the people, the region will remain stuck on its EU and reform path. I think the people in BIRN individually have proven they are passionate, reliable and informed enough to be that voice,” he says.
“BIRN means the promise of a better future. With the amount of corruption and nepotism, abuse of human rights and ignoring suffering we see every day, it would be so easy to join the hundreds of thousands who leave my country with no hope of a better future. This is my place to fight for a better hometown, a better country, a better region. I want that for my son,” he declares.
At the end of each day, Denis likes spending his spare time with his son the most. “My favourite way to spend any moment outside work is time with my four-year-old son, Noa,” he concludes.
