Tag: Serbia

The event was separated into two sessions. The first focused on the legal framework, the obligations of the media in campaigns and the use of different kind of election polls.

Rade Veljanovski, a professor from Belgrade’s Faculty of Political Science gave a wide overlook of the actual conditions in Serbia and introduced participants to best European practice. He stressed that the situation in the Serbian media is not appropriately regulated because of the lack of good legislative and the absence of professional independent organisations.

Djordje Vukovic, a researcher from election monitoring body, CESID explained the difference between professionally-implemented research and false election polls whose authors are dubious. He said journalists must be aware when getting results of election polls from an undefined source.

Zoran Stanojevic from RTS presented his experience from covering the election campaigns. He compared Serbian media coverage practice with US-based media and said that here we do not have a thematic approach which is crucial in western media. He said that there was no space for real debates of the main political players because they did not show interest in taking part in that kind of programme.

Slobodan Basic and Nadezda Milenkovic gave the participants a possibility to look behind the campaign’s main stage and to understand how electoral teams work. They explained the point of view of party members and their chancellors and the way of formulating main ideas for the campaign. Basic and Milenkovic explained the different strategies and the importance of marketing and public relations in the campaigns in Serbia.

Amela Bajrovic, Nikola Lazic, Dragan Gmizic and Isak Vorgucic will strengthen BIRN’s network of contributors and give our readers a direct insight into the latest developments in these regions. Our new correspondents are trained and supported through the Minority Media Training and Reporting Project.

Since 2005 more than 50 journalists from Serbia have attended the training programme organized by BIRN Serbia, and sponsored by the British Embassy in Belgrade and the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy. The project’s aim is to strengthen the capacity of local journalists and support their work.

The Netherlands Embassy has given generous support to BIRN’s development as an independent local civil society initiative, and helped its regional activities throughout 2006-07.
 
During the past two years BIRN has engaged in extensive training activities, building teams of investigative journalists throughout the Balkans and training them in different aspects of their trade.  It has created a network of over 200 local contributors and editors in nine countries across the region.

Since the beginning of the inter-governmental “Decade of Roma Inclusion” programme in 2005, a number of measures have been taken to improve conditions for this disadvantaged community. But there is much more to be done before the current patterns are changed. Frequent attacks on Roma people and their settlements, exclusion from society, the huge obstacles in the way of breaking the cycle of poverty and ways of overcoming cultural barriers will be some of topics that we will tackle.
 
“Roma media are important, because they influence the emancipation of the Roma, the development of their culture and traditions. Roma media also play a very important role in the development of inter-ethnic relations between Roma and other nations”, said Orhan Galjus, journalist from Amsterdam and activist at the “Media and minorities in SEE” conference.
 
Galjus will be a guest trainer at the Belgrade event.
 
The trainees’ reports will be published in English, Serbian and Roma languages early November.
 
These training and publishing activities will be implemented under the framework of the “Minority Media Training and Reporting Project”, supported by the British Embassy in Belgrade and the OSCE mission in Serbia.

The group comprised journalists who, having completed primary level training, have become regular BIRN contributors from Kosovo. In addition, two journalists were trained for the first time in news analyses and feature writing. They will begin work with other colleagues on articles dealing with issues concerning minority communities in Kosovo.

The training was delivered by Aleksandar Vasovic, BIRN Serbia editor, and Tim Judah, British journalist and expert on the Balkans. Over three days, Vasovic led a discussion on the differences in approach to reporting on Kosovo by journalists in the disputed territory, Belgrade and abroad, and looked at different ways of making a local story interesting and understandable to international readers.

Judah then held an editorial session with journalists; talking about how to put events in wider context, give local stories a broader perspective, about sources in the international community and new topics emerging in Kosovo.

Special attention was devoted to the question of ethical dilemmas raised by trainees, such as a reluctance to tackle topics that are not in the interest of their communities and the boundaries of professionalism.

Both Vasovic and Judah participated in a session devoted to outlining stories that will be published in August in a special edition of Balkan Insight.

The British Embassy in Belgrade and National Endowment for Democracy, NED, sponsored the event as part of a three-year journalism-training project.

The network in Serbia includes young and middle-aged journalists from a range of ethnic backgrounds, who work for local media outlets and national media in Belgrade.

As part of its efforts to build a truly nationwide network of journalists, BIRN Serbia is to launch a training course in East Serbia on June 9. Participants will be taught international reporting standards, news analyses and feature writing.

This training session will be followed by a special issue of Balkan Insight devoted to the socio-political situation in East Serbia, an underdeveloped area, blighted by a bad economy, unsuccessful privatization and ecological problems.

This session, sponsored by the British Embassy in Belgrade as part of a three- year journalism training project, will provide a group of five journalists with invaluable opportunities to adopt BIRN’s professional standards and become permanent members of its netw

They will take part in a panel discussion on April 12, tackling the issue of how countries of the Balkan region are managing to develop, set and promote their own foreign policy. This public event, which will include additional guest speakers, is to follow publication of a special edition of Balkan Insight addressing this topic.

Investigative journalism training for BIRN members will follow on April 13, continuing on April 14 with editorial planning and a review of ongoing projects initiated at the last meeting of the network in August 2006.

The board of the regional network will convene on April 15 to review institutional development issues and other outstanding business.

The purpose of the visit was to learn more about local affairs and the most serious problems affecting people in the region, one of the poorest in the country.

The principal problems that were discussed in our meetings were the inadequacy of the government’s Coordinating Body for South Serbia; the absence of dialogue between the representatives of local ethnic communities; the lack of a Serbian government economic and political plan for the region; as well as discrimination against the ethnic Albanians in the area of the privatisation.

Most participants in the discussions pointed out that, in their view, we could not expect any substantial progress in South Serbia until after the final solution of Kosovo’s status.

BIRN Serbia country director, Dragana Nikolic Solomon, met up with the editors of the only Albanian television broadcaster in the region, TV Spektra; the editor of Albanian-language weekly, Perpsektive; the editor-in-chief of RTV Bujanovac; the chairman of the Bujanovac Human Rights Committee; the principal of the primary school Sveta Sava in Bujanovac; local Presevo politicians; the editor-in-chief of the weekly Vranjske; the editor of Vranje-based OK Radio; and Martin Brooks, OSCE South Serbia Coordinator.

The BIRN visit also included meetings with BIRN contributors Nikola Lazic, Ardita Beljulji, Ivica Stepanovic and Faruk Daliu. The discussion focused on activities conducted so far; the expansion of journalist networks and topics covered in the BIRN special edition on South Serbia.

An agreement was reached that the journalists from this region should take part in the seminar dedicated to the problems facing South Serbia to be organised in Nis.

This visit is a part of the journalist-training programme covering multinational regions in Serbia, which is implemented by BIRN Serbia with the generous support of the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Belgrade and the National Endowment for Democracy, NED, the US foundation.