Tag: Serbia

BIRN Serbia, the Independent Journalists’Association of Serbia and Slavko Curuvija Foundation launched new website – kazitrazi.rs, as part of the joint project Public Money for the Public Interest.

All materials created within the project, such as handouts, manuals, case studies, multimedia, articles, etc, will be available on this website.

The info-hub will also contain documents relevant to budgetary spending in the media sector, data collected by the Research Team and reports produced over the course of the project.

“Tracing public money in Serbian media sector is of special importance as this money, for most of the local media, is the main source of survival,” said Tanja Maksic, program coordinator of BIRN Serbia.

“Partisan and non-transparent allocation leads to corrupt practices and abuse of public funds. In the long run, it diminishes fair competition and pushes media towards propaganda, rather than reporting in the public interest,” she added.

“That is why it is highly important to have effective monitoring tools as well as to engage the broader civil society community in this issue.”

The info-hub is envisaged as a resource center for all interested stakeholders, particularly in civil society, and as a unique platform where all relevant data can be easily accessed.

The website will be updated regularly through the duration of the entire project and will hopefully serve as valuable information source for all stakeholders interested in this topic.

The debate in Novi Sad was moderated by Nedim Sejdinovic from the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina (IJAV), and the panel included Tanja Maksic from BIRN Serbia, journalist Denis Kolundzija, legal consultant Milos Stojkovic, and Dubravka Valic Nedeljkovic from the Novi Sad School of Journalism (NSSJ).

It was organised as part of the Public Money for the Public Interest project that BIRN Serbia is implementing with the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation (SCF).

The aim of the debate was to present information gathered by BIRN, IJAV, SCF, IJAS and NNSJ about the deficiencies of the project-based co-funding system, as well as to propose possible improvements to address these problems.

The panelists said that there was what they described as political control of state funding allocations to local media, and that certain media were being favoured above others.

But there is rarely money for sensitive and marginalised groups, they agreed.

“A large amount of public money is allocated to the media through non-transparent individual income processes, which according to the law is provided for in emergency cases, but reality shows that rarely are these projects urgent interventions,” Valic Nedeljkovic said.

The idea of project-based co-funding is good, and should not be discarded despite its problems and misuses, the panelists said.

“The alternative is that state absolutely stops having a financial impact on the media sphere, which is not possible, or to going a step back and letting local governments distribute money without any public participation,” Sejdinovic said.

The training course was held as part of Digital Media Action for Freedom of Expression in Serbia project for journalists from local websites Danas, Maglocistac, Pressek, Forum Info and Bujanovacke.

During the two day, participants had the opportunity to learn how to write for online media, how to pick the right topics and how to find the most interesting ways to present their stories.

BIRN Serbia and Juzne vesti editors gave mentoring support to journalists working on investigations, and future cooperation between the participants was agreed.

BIRN Serbia and Juzne vesti are jointly implementingthe Digital Media Action for Freedom of Expression in Serbia Programme.

The programme offers website optimisation, editorial standardisation, training in investigative and analytical journalism, mentoring support for journalists, the development of public and social network profiles, and content exchange and cooperation on the local and national levels.

The programme continues for six months and includes four local websites in Serbia – Maglocistac, Pressek, Forum Info and Bujanovacke.

The event on November 20 began with the one-person play ‘Laura, Please’ performed by young actor Nikola Rakocevic, before a public debate about social media’s impact on everyday life.

‘Laura, Please’, produced by group Laura2000, deals with the issues of loneliness and love in the digital age.

After the play, BIRN editor Slobodan Georgiev, radio journalist Miroslav Miletic and marketing and IT expert Anita Pratljacic debated the role of modern technology in society and how traditional media needs to change.

The panelists agreed that there is no place for dialogue in traditional media, and that’s why discussion have thrived on Facebook and Twitter.

For a lot of people Facebook is the internet, and journalists should adapt to that fact, they said.

“Bearing in mind the expansion of fake news, people should be very careful when consuming news on the internet. People need to start checking information that is provided to them,” Georgiev warned.

Pratljacic explained that that traditional media didn’t find the way to adapt to new trends and technologies.

“Although social networks have their bad sides, they can also be the trigger for some good things. They are the place where people communicate and organise in order to bring change to their communities,” she said.

The event, the first of many that will be held all over the Serbia, was supported by Interaktiv and pressek.rs, local organisations from Kragujevac.

The debate in Belgrade brought together nearly 30 NGO and media representatives from the local and national levels.

After a delay of a year, the Ministry of Culture and Information has begun work on the media strategy, which should frame and strategically position the development of the Serbian media sector in the upcoming five years.

In the summer of 2017, the ministry assembled a working group to draft a proposal which could be publicly presented and discussed, before being adopted by the government.

But the working group has been dogged by controversy, recently culminating with four of its members quitting.

All the participants at the debate in Belgrade agreed that the new strategy must be fair across the media when it comes to awardeing financing.

Representatives of the media and journalists’ associations should be involved in the preparation of the new media strategy, the participants also said.

They argued that the existing media legislation is not bad, but the problem is the way in which it is used.

Tanja Maksic from BIRN Serbia said that the most important thing is that the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) must be an independent body.

“People who sit on the REM Council should be professionals. Political and state bodies should be excluded from proposing candidates for the Council,” Maksic said.

She also said that the new media strategy must ensure pluralism and a stable way of financing public media services.

Maksic argued that the strategy should envisage the creation of the state media financing registry and regulate public funds for the media as a free market development guarantor.

The debate was organized as part of the Public Money for the Public Interest project that BIRN Serbia is implementing with the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation.