Tag: Serbia

BIRN Journalists in Finals for Investigative Award

Three BIRN stories have been named as finalists for this year’s Investigative award by Independent Journalistic Association of Serbia in the categories for electronic [TV and radio], print and on-line media.

 

The jury, composed of Danica Vucenic, journalist from Insajder, Milorad Ivanovic, editor-in-chief of Newsweek Serbia, Predrag Blagojevic, editor-in-chief of online portal Juzne vesti and Pedja Obradovic, producer at TV N1, chose the following BIRN stories:

“Secret of Vucic’s tavern” has been nominated for the print media category.

BIRN Serbia journalist Jelena Veljkovic wrote on how Serbia’s Property Directorate claimed not to know that an exclusive restaurant had been opened in a part of the Belgrade Cooperative building, which the directorate leased to the “Belgrade on water company, refusing to answer whether it believed this use of public property was in accordance with the law.

The article was published in the weekly Vreme.

“Flatland without Birds?”, a documentary about illegal hunting in Serbia is nominated for the electronic media category.

The film, by journalist Dragan Gmizic, co-produced by BIRN Serbia and Greenfield Productions, examines how hunting rare turtle doves and quail is organised in Serbia and asks how and whether it can be controlled. The documentary was aired on TV N1, TV CG and Al Jazeera Balkans.

A story by a group of journalists from BIRN and OCCRP, “Making a Killing: The 1.2 Billion Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East”, has been nominated for the online media category.

The story revealed how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns have poured into the Middle East from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The same story is also among three finalists for the Czech Journalism Prize, the best-known Czech media award.

This year, 75 journalists applied for the award given by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, NUNS, and the US embassy in Serbia.

The award ceremony will take place at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade on May 10 at 5.30pm.

BIRN journalists have won this prize for the last four years.

Who owns the Media in Serbia?

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and Reporters Without Borders have started a joint “Media Ownership Monitor” project to shed light on the Serbian media market.  

The project will research who owns and ultimately controls the media in Serbia. The results of the project will be accessible in Serbian and English in a form of a website with a comprehensive information about the media landscape in the country as well as a database of major media outlets and their owners.

The project is financed by the German government. Based on a standardized and transparent methodology, MOM assesses the most relevant media outlets across all types of media (TV, radio, print, online) based on their respective audience shares. Transparent indicators will reveal the ownership concentration in the media markets, including political affiliations of media owners and/or their economic interests in other sectors of the economy. In addition, the project will provide a context analysis and evaluate whether the legal framework allows for independent media regulations. 

“This is a one-of-a-kind research done in Serbia so far. It will help people understand how ownership structures shape the news and increase their ability to assess the reliability of the media. Transparency of ownership structures therefore provides the basis for a more reliable journalism but also increases the credibility of the information the public can get”, explained Tanja Maksic, Program Coordinator of BIRN Serbia. 

“For a majority of people media is a primary source of information on political, social and economic developments of a country. We rely on media reports in forming our political and socio-economic opinions and decisions about the present and the future of our society therefore it is instrumental for any democratic society to have a healthy and transparent media sector” says Nafisa Hasanova, RSF Project Manager for Media Ownership Monitor.

The findings of the three-month research project will be presented at the end of June in Belgrade and henceforth a website will inform the general public as well as civil society advocates and political decision makers who owns their media.

 

Initiated by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Media Ownership Monitor project is a global research and advocacy effort to promote transparency and media pluralism at an international level. The country studies were so far conducted in Colombia, Cambodia and Tunisia Turkey, Ukraine, Peru, Philippines and Mongolia.This year MOM investigates media markets in Serbia, Ghana, Brazil, Pakistan and Morocco. For more visit MOM website: http://www.mom-rsf.org

 

 

Reporters Without Borders, BIRN Serbia Visit Media Houses

Representatives of the Reporters Without Borders – Germany and BIRN Serbia visited the Adria Media Group publishing house as part of the Media Ownership Monitor project. 

During the visit, the participants discussed freedom of expression, competition and media ownership in Serbia.

Representatives of the German branch of Reporters Without Borders came to Serbia in order to learn about media scene in the country as part of the project they are implementing with BIRN Serbia.

Apart from Adria Media Group, representatives of the two organisations will visit various relevant media and journalists’ associations and talk with reporters and editors about the conditions in which media operate in Serbia.

The Media Ownership Monitor project is intended to reveal the trends towards concentration of media ownership, enabling the public to make more educated choices as media consumers. Ideally, greater awareness will result in regulatory countermeasures in the medium term.

BIRN Serbia will conduct the media ownership monitoring in Serbia using Reporters Without Borders’ methodology.

The results will be presented after the completion of the monitoring, which is planned for June 2017.

BIRN Serbia Starts Three-Year Media Project

In cooperation with the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia and Slavko Curuvija Foundation, BIRN Serbia is implementing a project aimed at creating the conditions for the development of free and diverse media that work in the public interest.

The new project, entitled Public Money for the Public Interest – Supporting a Civil Society Initiative for the Public Interest, was created as a response to the problem of the insufficient involvement of civil society in public dialogue about media policy, as well as the downward trend in media freedom which directly affects the development of a democratic society.

The project is intended to help strengthen civil society organisations so they can influence the creation, implementation and evaluation of media policy.

A systematic approach to the impact of the legal framework is planned, as well as the improvement of media practice in the field of public interest representation, while advocating public support for the proposed changes.

The project will be implemented in Belgrade and other Serbian cities until December 2019 with the support of the European Union.

More information about the project, activities and goals can be found here.

BIRN Journalists Won 13 Awards in 2016

Journalists from the BIRN Network won prestigious national awards in their respective countries and a number of international awards in 2016. 

BIRN journalists in various countries won a total of 13 awards in 2016:

An alumna of BIRN’s Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme received a commendation from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in Albania, UN Women, for the “creation of a professional model of investigative journalism for the reporting on trafficking of women and girls”.

BIRN Macedonia journalists won the prestigious Nikola Mladenov award for investigative reporting for the Skopje 2014 Uncovered database and a series of investigative reports about the grand revamp of the capital.

A BIRN Serbia journalist scooped first prize for the best investigative journalism story in Serbia’s print media. The award was given by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, NUNS, and the US Embassy in Belgrade.

The documentary film ‘The Unidentified’ – produced as part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice programme – won the best short documentary award at the South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles. The film investigated the commanders responsible for brutal attacks during the Kosovo war.

An investigation into judges’ assets by BIRN Albania won first prize in the EU Investigative Journalism Award 2015 for Albania.

A BIRN Serbia journalist won first prize in the EU awards for investigative journalism in Serbia for a report on a controversial government tender to clear the flood-hit mine, while third prize went to a joint BIRN Hub and BIRN Kosovo story revealing how a multi-million-dollar road construction contract was quietly handed to a consortium with little highway-building experience linked to a controversial Serbian businessman.

BIRN Macedonia won the first and second prizes in the EU awards for investigative journalism for Macedonia for a series of articles related to the Telecom dossier and for Skopje 2014 Uncovered respectively.

The second prize in the EU awards for investigative journalism for Kosovo was awarded for the story published in BIRN Kosovo’s Gazeta Jeta ne Kosove.

BIRN Serbia’s documentary ‘Flatland without Birds?’, about illegal hunting in Serbia, was named in November the best Serbian film at the Belgrade International Green Culture Festival, Green Fest.

BIRN Albania journalist Lindita Cela won a prestigious prize for ‘hard-hitting investigations’ into organised crime and corruption in Albania. The Central European Initiative and the South East Europe Media Organisation, in special partnership with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung awarded the prize.

BIRN Kosovo won an award for the Best Television Story on Transparency and Anti-Corruption at the Anti-Corruption Journalism Awards, chosen by the Association of Journalists in Kosovo in cooperation with United Nations Development Programme and the Kosovo Anti-Corruption Agency.

BIRN Film Shows Problems Between Media and Police

The difficult relationships between journalists and the police forces in various countries in the Western Balkans are highlighted in the BIRN Serbia documentary ‘Police and Media’.

The BIRN Serbia documentary ‘Police and Media’ was broadcast on January 23 by the regional television network N1 as part of the Western Balkans Pulse for Police Integrity and Trust project.

The depoliticisation of the police and media is a prerequisite for the solution of this problem, journalists and media experts from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo agreed in the film.

But unlike journalists, representatives of the Montenegrin, Bosnian and Kosovo police believe that police and media enjoy good cooperation. Serbian police did not respond when asked for an interview for the film, however.

Most of BIRN’s interviewees in Serbia said that a selective approach to media, information leaks from investigations and their politicisation, and stigmatisation of certain journalists represents the biggest problems in the relationship between media and police.

Information is leaked to certain media for political purposes, they argued.

The relationship between media and police in Montenegro is similar to Serbia, interviewees said.

Journalists from Podgorica said that there have been some improvements in formal communications between police and media, but certain media are still prioritised.

Journalists from Sarajevo identified information leaks as a problems, but said it is was a lot less widespread than in Serbia.

They said that there are no ‘privileged’ media in Bosnia, and that all of them have same problems, because the information coming from official police channels is the minimum required according to the public’s legal right to information.

In Kosovo, the police force is the youngest state institution is trying to create an image of transparency. Journalists from Kosovo said they do face certain pressures, but they are much less severe than those faced by their counterparts in Serbia and in other countries in the region.

Internet Offers Income Perspectives, BIRN Serbia Debate Hears

People in Serbia are willing to pay for good content on the Internet but there are major issues with clickbait articles, badly-produced news and commercially-led content, a BIRN Serbia debate heard.

A BIRN Serbia debate about the future of media financing entitled ‘How Much Money, So Much Information’ was held on December 22 at the Startit Center in Novi Sad.

Public broadcasting shouldn’t be market-oriented, because that reduces its objectivity, Tatjana Vehovec, executive director of the Center for New Media LIBER, told the debate.

“We need to have services like media research centres. Mass media content begins with headlines like ‘You will not believe what happened’, and a lot of them are clickbait, while BIRN will not achieve anything if it becomes like that,” Vehovec pointed out.

Srdja Andjelic, the creator of the radio programme ‘Mjehur na mrezi’, expressed concern that a lot of people feel they don’t need to get correct information and said that few of them are interested in what will happen to the media.

He also said that people who try to improve the content that Serbian media provides often run into trouble.

“A few of us have always had a problem when we tried to change it,” he explained.

Dasko Milinovic, one of the creators of the online radio show ‘Dasko i Mladja’, said however that the internet offers new possibilities for content creators.

“People are running away from traditional media to the Internet and there is room for everyone,” Milinovic said.

“Mladja and I decided that, since we didn’t have anywhere to broadcast our programme, the best thing was to do something for ourselves. Our goal is to have as many people as possible who will pay to listen to us, so that individual payments don’t have to be huge,” he added.

“We were surprised when we were able to buy equipment and start work using the first payments. We should be thankful for the Internet which provides us with all that space,” said Mladen Urdarevic, the other member of the duo.

Jelena Vasic of the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK) said that her outlet gets most of its donations from the diaspora, but a lot of people from Serbia are ready to pay for its content.

“We have a fully developed system of communication with our readers, and from the very beginning, our idea was that if we work for the citizens, then they should be our donors,” said Vasic.

 

Money Buys Media Influence, BIRN Serbia Tells Conference

Buying influence over editorial policy and positive coverage through state advertising is one of the most effective mechanisms of media control in Serbia, Tanja Maksic from BIRN Serbia told a regional conference.

Tanja Maksic told a working group on state advertising at a conference on media freedom and safety of journalists in the Western Balkans on December 6 in Belgrade that influence can be bought through the media in Serbia.

Pressure on standard business models caused as a result of new technology, digitisation, the impact of the Internet, mobile phones and social media has led to the situation where Serbian media increasingly rely on state funds and resources, the working group heard.

Maksic explained that Serbia has a range of ways of distributing money to favoured media.

“Some of them are direct contracts with media companies, advertising by public enterprises, the financing of the public broadcaster, and indirect impact through advertising agencies,” she said.

The recommendations from the working group included: the necessity of additionally regulating the legal framework that governs state funding of the media, using citizens’ money to promote pluralism of content and increasing the influence of independent regulatory bodies.

“It is also very important that independent regulatory bodies, the anti-corruption agency and civil society improve their monitoring system on state money spending during election campaigns due to the fact that this kind of spending is the least transparent,” concluded Maksic.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence – 2016 winners chosen!

Serbeze Haxhiaj was awarded first prize for the 2016 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme at a closing ceremony in Pristina on Friday.

Serbeze won the prize of 4,000 euros for her story about the challenge facing a new court in protecting witnesses to crimes allegedly committed by former guerrilla fighters often regarded as heroes in Kosovo. 

The second prize of 3,000 euros went to Masenjka Bacic for her article about the threat to abortion rights in Croatia. 

The third prize and 1,000 euros was awarded to Elvis Nabolli for his story about the resilience of the cannabis industry in Albania. 

“Serbeze Haxhiaj has written a powerful and brave story about a controversial topic that Kosovar society has been reluctant to address”, said jury member Kristof Bander. 

Ten talented journalists from Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Greece spent more than six months of 2016 pursuing in-depth stories and investigations around this year’s fellowship theme, ‘Trust’. 

The book “Trust: Misplaced. Betrayed. Restored” brings together their work and was presented at the award ceremony in front of 150 guests including media partners from Europe, prominent public figures and more than 50 members of the Fellowship’s alumni network from across the region. 

The jury members who selected the winners were Florian Hassel, Central and Easter Europe correspondent for the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Remzi Lani, executive director of the Albanian Media Institute, Kristof Bander, of the European Stability Initiative, Milorad Ivanovic, executive editor of the Serbian edition of Newsweek, Elena Panagiotidis, an editor for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Gerfried Sperl, columnist of Austrian daily Der Standard. 

With the conclusion of this year’s programme, the 10 fellows join the BFJE alumni network, which already consists of more than 80 journalists from 10 Balkan countries who collaborate on stories and promote the highest professional standards.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was launched in 2007 to promote high-quality, cross-border reporting. The programme provides fellows with financial and editorial support, enabling them to travel, report and write their stories and develop their journalistic skills. 

A project that promotes the development of robust and responsible press, the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence has evolved into a decade-long platform that has helped shaping journalism standards in the Balkans and the very careers of participating reporters. 

The fellowship will issue a call for applications for next year’s programme in January 2017.

Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is implemented by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, supported by ERSTE Foundation and Open Society Foundations.  

 

BIRN Regional Director Gives Media Freedom Warning

Real press freedom ceased to exist in Serbia long ago, BIRN regional director Gordana Igric told Deutsche Welle in an article about attacks on free speech in the Balkans.

Journalists who dare to criticise the government of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic regularly become the target of smear campaigns, Gordana Igric said in the article about attacks on independent journalists and press freedom published by Deutsche Welle on December 2.  

Human Rights Watch backed Igric’s claims with official statistics from the Independent Journalist Association of Serbia (NUNS), the article added.

Figures show that, in the first seven months of this year alone, there were 33 attacks on journalists in Serbia, including physical attacks, threats and intimidation, it said.

“Even Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, seen in the West as a reliable partner, is not averse to wild attacks on independent media outlets. He has, for instance, called some online platforms, a number of which received EU prizes for journalistic excellence, ‘scum’,” it continued.

Igric told Deutsche Welle that is one of the reason for the continued problems was the EU and Germany’s “tepid message about the importance of democratic values in Serbia”.

“Investigative journalist networks such as BIRN, CINS and KRIKS have been vehemently attacked by government officials and other media outlets with close government ties. Labels like ‘enemies of the state’ and ‘foreign henchmen’ were almost always part of these defamation campaigns,” the Deutsche Welle article said.