Tag: Serbia

BIRN Serbia Journalist Joins Newsweek Conference Panel

Slobodan Georgiev, a journalist from BIRN Serbia, was a panel member at the ‘Challenges of Investigative Journalism in the Contemporary World’ discussion on September 3.

The panel was part of a conference on media freedom organized by Newsweek magazine in Belgrade which brought together more than 200 participants including journalists, editors and media experts.

Georgiev pointed out that investigative reporters can face problems if they publish stories that the authorities find uncomfortable.

“The government shaped the media environment in the country and if you do some kind of monitoring or research what the government does and what the people who sit in government do, you find yourself in trouble,” Georgiev told the conference.

He said that after BIRN Serbia published a report on a government contract for pumping flood water from the Serbia’s Tamava mine – which was criticised by the authorities – other media took the government’s line.

“When the Prime Minister had a problem with us, fellow journalists didn’t address the issue about our story, but about who pays us,” he said.

At the conference, BIRN Regional Network Director Gordana Igrić moderated a conversation about crime and organ trafficking in Kosovo with Michael Montgomery from the Center for Investigative Reporting in the United States.

BIRN Conference Sparks Widespread Media Interest

Several Bosnian TV stations, including the region’s CNN affiliate N1 and over 30 online media outlets, reported on BIRN’s conference on media freedom challenges in the Balkans held last week.

The BIRN network directors were featured on ‘Reflex’, a talk show hosted by Mimo Sahinpasic on TV OBN in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They discussed the various issues media professionals are faced with in the region today.

Commenting on the situation in Macedonia, BIRN’s director Ana Petruseva highlighted the power the government has over media in the country. “The prime minister’s cabinet decides on everything, from topics to be covered to potential interviewees,” Petruseva said.

BIRN regional network director Gordana Igric told FACE TV meanwhile that the media and civil society in the Balkans should not wait for Brussels’ help but act to ensure their own freedom and avoid becoming victims of political games.

Mirna Buljugic, BIRN BiH’s acting director, gave an interview for N1 in which she raised concerns about the deteriorating situation in the media sector, increasing political pressures as well as physical attacks on journalists in the country.

The cost of ethical and professional media is always high as room for critical opinion is constantly shrinking, concluded Jeta Xharra and Dragana Zivkovic Obradovic, BIRN directors from Kosovo and Serbia for Hayat TV.

In addition, EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn’s video message to the conference about the disturbing media situation in the Balkans was featured on Radio Free Europe, Banja Luka-based portal Buka, klix.ba, news agencies Tanjug and Fena as well as kurir.rs, vesti.rs, beta.informer.rs, bljeask.info, dnevnik.ba and video news site source.ba.

BIRN Serbia, NALED, Run Budget Process Workshops

Nine towns and municipalities in Serbia – Sombor, Subotica, Pirot, Knjazevac, Sremska Mitrovica, Pancevo, Ruma, Zrenjanin and Trstenik – took part in workshops on the topic of involving citizens in the budget process with representatives of BIRN Serbia and NALED in the framework of the project “Participatory Budgeting”.

The workshops were attended by 200 representatives of NGOs, media and the business sector, as well as representatives of town or municipal governments.

Introducing the practice of public participation in the decision-making process on local budgets, the project aims to strengthen the role of the media, civil society, businesses and citizens in the democratic process at the local level and so strength ther credibility of the decisions made by the public administration.

The project’s special value lies in the direct involvement of citizens and representatives of the media and civil society in the process of budget adoption and enabling them to continue to monitor the implementation of planned priority actions.

Workshops were held on 16 – 26 June and project activities will continue in August.

Online Media Association Formed

A new online association, OMA, brings together 18 internet portals from all parts of Serbia, committed to the affirmation of the free, independent and professional work of online media and highest journalistic standards, the statement by OMA said.

OMA will work to develop and promote ethical standards of reporting on the internet as well as strengthening the role of online media in the democratization of society.

The first elected president of the board of the association, Predrag Blagojevic, is editor in chief of Juzne vesti. The new vice president is Tanja Maksić, from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN Serbia.

The first activities of AOM will aim to improve ethical standards on the Internet, with a focus on copyright protection, helping people to understand the new legal regime that applies to online media and connect with relevant regional and international actors.

Founders of OMA include the websites 021.rs, Autonomija.info, Cenzolovka, CINS, IST Media, Istinomer, JugMedia, JUGpress, Juzne vesti, cricket, Media and Reform Center Nis, mingle, My Sad, Njuz.net, SOinfo, ŠumadijaPress and Titulli.com.

BIRN Marks its Tenth Birthday in Bosnia

The BIRN network celebrated its 10th anniversary from June 12th to 14th with a regional media conference in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, followed by series of team building events, meetings and workshops on Mt Vlasic, some two hours’ drive away.

More than a hundred employees of the organisation from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania and Serbia participated in two days of events at a hotel on Mt Vlasic.

Programme managers, project coordinators and administrative staff discussed rules, guidelines and a new information management strategy in two sessions led by Dusica Cook, BIRN Regional Operations Manager.

Jeta Xharra, BIRN’s Kosovo Director, used the opportunity to brief the management on the monitoring of elections, courts, procurement, the Kosovo-Serbia agreement, and municipalities.

BIRN journalists attended training sessions on journalistic standards led by Andrew Gray, Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence Editor, and on investigative journalism, led by Lawrence Marzouk, BIRN editor.

Valon Canhasi, BIRN Kosovo’s Social Media Editor, guided journalists on the importance of having a presence on social media and on the latest trends in users’ habits.

Balkan Insight and Balkan Transitional Justice staff held editorial and commissioning meetings, while Ana Petruseva, Balkan Insight’s Managing Editor and Milos Milosavljevic, BIRN’s Chief Digital Officer, held a technical training session for journalists.

Finally, BIRN journalists and management had two sessions – one on databases in the Network and their further development and possible integration, and the other focusing on BIRN’s web strategy.

BIRN Assembly members and Gordana Igric, BIRN’s Regional Network Director, convened for their regular annual meeting where they discussed BIRN’s new five-year strategy.

The BIRN team celebrated the fact that the Balkan Investigative Reporting Regional Network was established in July 2005, ten years ago, since when it has grown significantly, winning numerous national and international awards and merits and becoming one of the most trusted media organisations in the Balkan and Southeast Europe region.

The next meeting of the BIRN network, scheduled for 2017, will see a new round of team building activities, workshops and a checkpoint review of the five-year strategy.

Tanja Maksic

Tanja Maksic has been a member of the BIRN Serbia team since 2010. She develops and manages projects in the field of media policy and good governance.

Tanja also conducts research and is responsible for the design, theme definition and methodology of research, for writing policy reports and recommendations, and for advocacy work. Although she studied journalism, Tanja has specialised in media monitoring, especially content analysis of media production and the media economy. She is particularly involved in advocating the transparent financing of the media.

Tanja graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, and before BIRN she worked for the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) and as an associate of the Media Center Belgrade.

Jelena Veljkovic

Jelena Veljkovic has worked as a journalist since 1992, mostly covering topics of politics, public finance, corruption and war crimes.

She started her journalistic career at Belgrade-based Studio B’s morning show, where she later worked as an editor of the channel’s primetime news programme. During her 20-year journalistic career, she has worked for several media outlets, but spent the longest period at Radio and Television B92, where she worked as news editor, the host and the author of the show Truth, Responsibility, Reconciliation and radio show Kaziprst, and an associate of the investigative journalism TV show Insider. She dealt with issues of corruption as an associate of the government’s council for the fight against corruption, where she worked on the development of a number of reports.

She was the winner of an Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia investigative journalism award as a co-author of the series Secret of the Yellow House, in which she investigated war crimes in Kosovo and Albania and the alleged trafficking of human organs.

She has worked for BIRN Serbia since February 2015.

BIRN Serbia Holds Heathcare Financing Debate

The debate on Tuesday heard how the Law on Public Procurement is causing problems for the healthcare system and needs to be changed.

Berislav Vekić, state secretary at the Ministry of Health, told the reminded that the ministry had launched an initiative to change the law.

“We cannot, as a ministry, change the law by ourselves, it is up to the government,” he said, adding that although he expects changes, he cannot promise anything.

Vekić noted that health minister Zlatibor Loncar has already taken the initiative and raised the public procurement problem in the Serbian assembly.

He said that there were problem not only with acquiring linear accelerators, but also magnets, scanners, large appliances for diagnostic procedures, ultrasound and X-ray machines.

“We are the first ministry that acknowledged the data that we have 65 per cent of total health personnel – doctors – who are aged between 55 and 65 years. I wonder what has been done in previous years regarding the rejuvenation of staff and why nobody made sure that we didn’t get into a situation of shortage of specialist personnel in certain areas,” Vekić said.

He said that nearly a third of staff employed in health institutions are actually non-medical staff. “The previous administration employed drivers, porters, stokers and administrative staff, so every third person is a non-medical worker,” said Vekić.

He added that last year about 1,000 health workers were employed – 400 doctors and 600 nurses and medical technicians.

Opposition Democratic Party MP and member of the parliamentary committee for Health and Family, Dušan Milisavljević said that politics should not be the deciding factor in the health sector, noting that many previous governments, including his own, hadn’t considered health and the health sector a priority.

“The health sector is outdated and does not reflect the needs of the citizens of Serbia at the present time,” he said, naming the Law on Public Procurement as one of the major problems.

“Because of this law we are waiting for a radiation therapy appliance for 2.5 years, so patients suffering from severe malignant diseases are waiting in line for radiation therapy for several months, although it has to be done after two, not more than three weeks after surgery,” Milisavljevic explained.  

He said that the law is generally not bad since it centralizes the procurement process and thus decreases the possibility for corruption, but it needs to be changed and adjusted to actual needs.  

Director of legal affairs of the Republic Fund for Health Insurance (RFZO) Petar Stajković said that it was impossible for two or three regulations to solve all problems.

Stajković said there are two crucial laws that even do not recognize the system of health insurance and health care – the Public Procurements Law and the Law on the Budget System.   

“The Law on public procurement of medical equipment and medicines is implemented in the same way one procures chemicals for household maintenance,” warned Stajkovic.

He said that the Law on the Budget System does not recognize health issues in a proper way, as health institutions aren’t budgetary institutions but direct users of public funds through contracts, and rigid application of the law very often leads healthcare institutions into problems.

At the debate, participants also got acquainted with the results of the analysis of the sources of finance for healthcare institutions, implemented by CSO Legal Scanner, and its main finding that some regulations govern the area of finance in a direct way, while others require specific legal interpretation and so have to be changed and unified with other legislative documents in this area.

This debate and the report on sources of financing of health care institutions were produced with the financial assistance of the European Union, within the programme “Strengthening Media Freedom”. The views expressed at the debate and the contents of the document are the sole responsibility of BIRN Serbia and other event participants and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.

BIRN’s Response to Johannes Hahn on Media Freedom

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is issuing a statement after Johannes Hahn, the European Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiation, said he could not react to claims about media freedom violations in Serbia without seeing proof. BIRN is sending its response to all relevant human rights organisations, EU diplomats and international journalists.

„The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network would like to express its alarm and serious concern over the statement of Johannes Hahn, the EU’s Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations who has said that he needs to see evidence of declining media freedom in Serbia.

At a press briefing in Brussels on Monday Commissioner Hahn said that he could not react to claims about violations of press freedom in Serbia without seeing concrete evidence. He said:

“I have heard this several times [concerns about media freedom] and I am asking always about proofs….I am willing to follow up such reproaches, but I need…evidence and not only rumours,” Hahn told journalists.

The recent onslaught on our network is clear proof of what is happening in Serbia. Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s Prime Minister, targeted us, unleashing a wave of attacks in which we were branded as “liars”, “mercenaries” and “traitors’. Some of the material has been detailed here: https://birn.eu.com/en/page/birn-under-fire.

We see fit to remind Mr Hahn that, coupled with the attacks on us, came attacks on the European Commission itself which has funded an investigative reporting project published by BIRN. It was accused of paying BIRN to attack the Serbian government.

In the first week of vicious campaign, 170 reports were published about us. Only four media outlets in Serbia gave BIRN room to respond. No mainstream media reported on the corruption story published by BIRN, which triggered the attacks. By contrast the prime minister’s accusations against us were widely covered.

Mr Vucic’s demonstration of power sends the chilling message that a similar fate awaits any other critical voices. Campaigns have now followed against the Serbian Ombudsman and Humanitarian Law Center.

Other media have suffered significant pressures, and journalists talk of direct pressures and self-censorship which has been documented by the Association of Serbian journalists in December 2014.

The new World Press Freedom Index ranked Serbia in 67th position, a fall from the 54th place it had one year ago.

This ranking is also in line with European Commission’s own 2014 progress report which noted “concerns about deteriorating conditions for the full exercise of freedom of expression in Serbia.” Indeed Commissioner Hahn’s statement stands in a somewhat baffling and stark contrast to the report which warned of a “growing trend of self-censorship which, combined with undue influence on editorial policies, and a series of cases of intervention against websites, are detrimental to freedom of the media and adversely affect the development of professional and investigative journalism.”

In Serbia and the rest of the region, there is a widespread belief that democracy and freedom of expression are less important concerns for the EU than the issue of maintaining stability. We believe that this is a grave mistake and that there is no stability without them. 

BIRN and its partners are deeply concerned that the situation is likely to deteriorate further and we therefore expect the European Commission to express concern over these issues in a clear manner and not to leave any room for doubt about what is actually happening in Serbia.“

Unite for Freedom, BIRN Media Debate Hears

Panellists and guests at the ‘Free the media’ debate concluded that in times of financial hardship and other pressures, journalists must unite against new forms of censorship.

BIRN Serbia and Human Right House organised the first in a series of debates on media freedom on Thursday in Belgrade’s Media Centre.

One of the messages from the debate that gathered more then 50 people, including journalists, NGO activists and representatives of embassies, is the need for journalists, NGOs and citizens to connect and join forces in the fight for human rights and media freedom.

The debate was staged in the aftermath of the campaign launched against BIRN by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic after the organisation published an investigation on January 8 published a report on the controversial tender to de-water Tamnava mine.

Jovana Gligorijevic, from the weekly magazine Vreme, the only outlet to republish the BIRN investigation in full, said that the pressures had started even before the story was out.

“While the article was still being drafted, we received a phone call and it sounded like this: We heard that those people of yours [BIRN Serbia] are writing about this topic; if you publish it, we’ll sue you,” Gligorijevic said.

Gordana Igric, BIRN regional director, said the campaign against BIRN revealed the scale of the pressure on media freedom in Serbia.

In two first weeks of the campaign, she recalled, while the media reported on BIRN 294 times, BIRN had been contacted only 11 times to give statements and answer accusations or provide explanations of the story. None of the mainstream media contacted BIRN.

“That does not mean that media don’t want to report, but that they are completely hemmed in by an economically devastated country,” Igric stated, sourcing one of the main problems in the difficult financial situation of both media outlets and journalists.

“We need a coalition in the Balkans. Journalism is the field where the public interest is being defended, it’s not just a field where the money may be earned,” Igric said.

Journalists from southern and east Serbia participated in the debate via a video link from the Media Centre in the city of Nis.

Panellists recalled that while the state murdered journalists back in the Nineties, nowadays it was “killing them financially.”

Predrag Blagojevic, editor of newspaper Juzne Vesti, said the funds that the state allocates to the media are a key tool of control.

“The state pressures and controls the media through the money they give them by secret contracts, and in that situation it is impossible to expect them [those media] to criticise the government,” Blagojevic said.

He added that another form of financial pressure is what his newsroom faces constantly.

“Tax authorities are constantly in our office. Of course there are differences in levels of communications, threats, but the basics of control are the same,” he said.

Jovana Gligorijevic, from the weekly Vreme, agreed that pressures on media were common, and no one should expect them to just disappear; they had to be fought back against.

“Freedom is being conquered,” she warned.

Maja Stojanovic, executive director of Civic Initiatives, a member of Human Rights House, said the media, NGOs and ordinary people had to come together and fight for freedom of expression.

“It is our responsibility that media aren’t free, us as citizens and civil society organisations, because we haven’t done more,” Stojanovic said.

“Free Media” debate was the first in a series of events that BIRN Serbia and Human Rights House will be organising monthly. The Twitter tag on which everyone can follow the events and share the information is #OslobodiMedije.