Tag: Serbia

COVID-19 in Serbia: Information Resilience

BIRN Serbia
In the current situation, there is a great demand for punctual, accurate and objective information among citizens. The crisis disclosed the negative impact of disinformation and its influence on spreading panic among citizens.

Summary

The COVID-19 global crisis reveals the need for and essential role of independent, objective journalism. Serbian society is additionally burdened by the fact that democratic institutions are weak and independent media are marginalized. The Serbian government introduced the state of emergency in an early stage to combat the crisis coronavirus caused. Yet, as much as this measure seemed justified to stop spreading the virus and protect the healthcare system, it opened a space for potential abuses.

In the current situation, there is a great demand for punctual, accurate and objective information among citizens. The crisis disclosed the negative impact of disinformation and its influence on spreading panic among citizens. In addition, the restrictive measures of the Serbian government demand public attention and serious journalistic work in order to keep them transparent and accountable and to prevent deterioration of democratic values and institutions once the crisis is over. Thus, BIRN will go beyond daily reports in order to offer in-depth analysis and data articles that can provide the context, analyze causes and consequences, as well as trends regarding the COVID – 19 crisis and its implications on the public services, work of institutions and society at large.

While mainstream media extensively cover the Covid-19 crisis through daily informative production there is a lack of analysis of the trends, wider context, and the effects of the pandemic on different aspects of our society. Furthermore, most of the media cover the cases and updates in major cities (Belgrade, Nis, Novi Sad, etc.) while the effects of the pandemic in smaller places are even more striking and are paradigmatic of the systemic response flaws. Lack of in-depth articles and relevant analysis causes the greater negative influence of fake news and disinformation hindering efforts to mitigate the consequences of the crisis. Society is dealing, with the pandemic, but also with infodemic, and the best course of the action is to rely on fact-based, reliable, and objective journalism.

Donors: The Balkan Trust for Democracy and USAID.

Information Sheet

Objective

Increasing the quality of media coverage and public understanding of the current COVID-19 crisis and its consequences.

Activities

1) Production (data and in-depth articles and journalistic reports on a daily basis);

2) Work with local journalists;

3) Online campaign.

Target Groups

Journalists, decision-makers, citizens

BIRN Wins Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Award

To mark World Press Freedom Day on Sunday, campaign group Reporters Without Borders Austria awarded the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network with its annual Press Freedom Award – A Signal for Europe.

The Vienna office of the Reporters Without Borders announced that the BIRN Network has been awarded for its courageous investigative journalism in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, and for its dedication to the fight for human rights, democracy and justice for the victims of war crimes.

The award also honours BIRN’s founder, Gordana Igric, who served as the organisation’s regional director until May 2018, for her pioneering work in establishing the network.

“We are honoured by this acknowledgment from our Austrian colleagues. It comes at a critical time for our region, where media are often hampered by political or business influences and lack the resources to report beyond their own country’s borders,” said BIRN’s network director, Marija Ristic.

“The award gives us more motivation to continue with our uncompromising reporting despite continuous attacks on our journalists,” Ristic added.

“We are also thankful for the honour given to our founder, Gordana Igric, who had a vision of a free regional media network and paved the way for a new generation of journalists and editors who continue to champion the values of human rights and democracy,” she said.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network was established in 2004 as a network of organisations across the Balkans promoting freedom of speech, human rights and democratic values.

BIRN has country-based organisations in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia. It also works editorially in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine.

BIRN’s structure has the advantage of combining local expertise with unique regional cooperation.

The Press Freedom Award – A Signal for Europe is given every year by the Austrian branch of Reporters Without Borders, a leading international non-profit and non-governmental organisation that safeguards the right to freedom of information. Its mandate is to promote free, independent and pluralistic journalism and to defend media workers.

BIRN Bosnia and Serbia’s Ana Curic up for Sigma Awards

A database of Bosnian government official vehicles, a project of the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been shortlisted for the 2020 Sigma Awards for data journalism. The BIRN BiH project was shortlisted in the Open Data category. Ana Curic, a BIRN journalist from Serbia, has been shortlisted in the Young Journalist category for her overall work in 2019.

The Open Data category shortlists those projects that best “reflect a commitment to making data open, accessible and relevant to other journalists, researchers and general public”.

Fourteen projects were shortlisted in all, including some by media outlets such as ProPublica, the BBC, AFP, Aljazeera, Yahoo News, Pulitzer Center and HuffPost.

The database of official vehicles in Bosnia contains all tenders for the procurement of official limos from 2018 onwards, as well as data on the vehicle fleets of hundreds of institutions and public companies.

It is regularly updated and contains the technical specifications of the vehicles obtained from tender documents, which are otherwise not available to the public in Bosnia during the bidding procedures.

BIRN BiH entered the competition with its article published in January 2019 concerning the costs of procurement of official vehicles during the previous year.

The database is unique, and is often quoted by the media in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region.

BIRN Serbia journalist Ana Curic, who is shortlisted for the 2020 awards in the Young Journalist category, has been nominated for her whole work in 2019.

She investigated a network of companies connected to the Serbian and Hungarian governments that won almost all street lighting tenders in towns and cities across Serbia.

She also worked on a data-driven story about money laundering in Serbia, based on data from hundreds of verdicts and on information from the prosecution and courts.

In 2019, she became a contributor to a global investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ICIJ, called the Implant Files, after collecting and analysing 137 documents about problematic implants used in Serbia, which became part of the International Medical Devices Database.

The Sigma awards are given to best work in the field of data journalism all over the world. Prizes are given for best data-driven reporting, best visualisation, innovation, for best young journalist, open data and for best news application.

There were 510 entries from 66 countries for this year’s awards. The jury of ten international experts picked the best in each category – 82 projects from 31 countries.

The president of the jury this year is Simon Rogers, an award-winning journalist and data journalism teacher at Medill-Northwestern University, in San Francisco and data editor on the News Lab Team at Google.

The Sigma award was instituted by DataJournalism.com, a project of the European Journalism Centre, an international organisation of journalists established in Brussels, with sponsorship provided by Google News Initiative.

The Sigma award winners will be announced by the end of February 2020.

Under the Spotlight: Capital Investments Projects in Serbia

BIRN Serbia
Promoting institutional transparency and accountability through investigative reporting.

Summary

BIRN continues promoting government transparency and accountability through investigative reporting. BIRN Serbia will continue operating its flagship web platform Javno (Public, www.javno.rs), which currently hosts 20 databases that monitor public spending and the work of the judiciary. The watchdog’s searchable databases contain information such as court cases on tax evasion and money laundering, public procurements approved through emergency measures, subsidies distributed to media by local governments, and travel expenses incurred by government officials.

The project will also encourage other media organizations and relevant NGOs to utilize its databases for other investigative, research, and accountability initiatives.

Donor: National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

Information Sheet

Main Objective

Promoting institutional transparency and accountability through investigative reporting.

Activities

1) Production of investigative articles;

2) Creation of two databases on reconstruction projects for health care facilities, public schools, and energy companies in Serbia;

3) Production of a series of multimedia materials, such as videos and infographics, in order to make the investigative stories more appealing and understandable to the general public.

Target Groups

Local media journalists, state representatives, local-government representatives, public at large, CSOs representatives

Where is the Place of Media in New Internet Governance Policies?

BIRN Serbia
Raising involvement of the media industry in a public debate on new development policies and internet governance issues.

Summary

During 2020, new legal and strategic documents are expected to be adopted in Serbia reshaping media landscape in a digital environment.
Internet and new technologies are the principal transformers of the media sector that bring important change to the ways of informing citizens. Development is based not only on new technologies that are accelerated by the innovation in IT industry (programmes for creation of databases, virtual reality, video, podcast, video 360) but also on new policies focused on internet governance that have a strong impact on the media industry. Only on the European level new directives on copyright, personal data protection were adopted, the directive on AVMSD is in the process of being amended. At the global forums, regulation of internet and internet governance are the most important topics the media industry is dealing with. This issue is especially important for developing countries (or those in transition, as it is the case with Serbia) and which stayed marginalised so far. Above-mentioned issues, BIRN intends to explore and put in a local context, thus counterbalancing the lack of meaningful debate in Serbia.
Media Strategy and other national initiatives, such as Digital Serbia, do not recognize the liaison between media development and internet governance. In such an environment, internet governance policies could be considered as an additional responsibility which has been imposed on media, but as well as an opportunity to overcome or bypass the current deficiency of media regulation.
BIRN will conduct research in order to formulate policy position and strengthen role of media in upcoming processes. With this project, we are aiming to contribute to a new rethinking of media policies and media development.

Donor: Open Society Foundation, Serbia

Information Sheet

Main Objective

Raising involvement of the media industry in a public debate on new development policies and internet governance issues.

Specific Objectives

The initiative is intended to support CSOs in Serbia to test, evaluate and scale their advocacy initiatives in a more strategic way.

Target Groups

Media professionals, decision-makers, state institutions representatives, media managers, journalists, CSOs, IT and telecommunication organisations and institutions

Main implementer

BIRN Serbia

BIRN Joins International Investigation into Medical Devices

A journalist from BIRN Serbia has contributed to a major worldwide investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the safety of medical devices such as implants.

BIRN Serbia journalist Ana Curic has become one of the contributors to the International Medical Devices Database, the largest such resource for patients around the world, with more than 120,000 records about faulty or potentially dangerous medical devices.

The database, produced by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), was recently updated with information from 20 more countries, including Serbia.

It is part of major investigation by the ICIJ called the Implant Files, a series of reports that have been published since November 2018.

The ICIJ reports focus on medical devices that have caused health problems around the world before being removed from the market.

The ICIJ revealed how health authorities across the globe have failed to protect millions of patients from poorly-tested implants which could affect people’s health and safety instead of helping them.

In Serbia over the last ten years, there were 137 records on medical devices – recalls, safety alerts and field safety notices – which now are part of the International Medical Devices Database.

The Serbian Ministry of Health and Agency for medicines and medical devices (ALIMS) did not reply to BIRN’s request for a comment, however.

The International Medical Devices Database includes information about medical devices which were subject of safety alerts or recalls, the reasons for withdrawing the devices from sale, and the companies that manufactured them.

‘Predators’ Documentary: Serbia’s Fishy Problem

New documentary produced by award-winning environmental film maker looks at the damaging consequences of over-fishing and illegal fishing in Serbia.

A new film, Predators, which will have its premiere in Velgrade on November 1, deals with the problem and consequences of over-fishing in Serbia, following the activities of fishermen and nature protection activists in their effort to prevent illegal fishing in the country, and its consequences.

The film highlights the uncontrolled and unregulated nature of the fish market, which is why both state and legal fish producers are being financially disadvantaged.

The film documents the open sale of strictly protected species that are on the verge of extinction, as well as the sale of fish in places that do not meet basic sanitary conditions.

The film is based on a BIRN investigation published in July 2018 that dealt with the problem of the extinction of starlets due to overcrowding and illegal catches.

One of the authors of the investigation is the author of the documentary, journalist Dragan Gmizic, founder of the Greenfield production company, from Novi Sad.

Gmizic is also known for his earlier films dealing with environmental issues in Serbia, such as Flatland without Birds? and Dark Shadow of Green Energy, which were both awarded at local and regional festivals.

Predators was produced by Greenfield Production in collaboration with Balkan Investigative Network – BIRN Serbia, WWF Adria and AWP – Association for Widlife Protection.

After the film projection, there will be a discussion on the topic of fish theft with the film actors.

The environmental documentary will be premiered on Friday, November 1 at 7pm in Nova Iskra, in the Dorcol district of Belgrade

BIRN Partners with Prague Media Point Conference

BIRN Serbia is a partner in this year’s Prague Media Point conference, an international journalism conference for media professionals, journalists, academics, policy-makers and activists which will be held in the Czech capital from December 5-7.

At the event, BIRN will present its Reporting Democracy programme, as part of a session entitled ‘Leading and impactful investigative journalism in the V4 and Western Balkan countries’.

The principal objective of the Visegrad Fund-supported project is to showcase examples of investigative journalism projects that have overcome challenges posed by globalisation, digitalisation and populism, resulting in shrinking revenue streams and low audience trust.

The goals of the project are to level the playing field for media experts and investigative journalists from the V4 region and the Western Balkans with those in the rest of Europe and around the world in terms of access to relevant information, skill-building and networking.

The project is a collaboration between KEYNOTE (Czechia), Transitions (Czechia), ResPublica (Poland), Denník N/N Press (Slovakia), School of Communications and Media (Slovakia), BIRN Serbia, and the Albanian Media Institute (Albania).

EU Investigative Journalism Award-Winners Named in Serbia

The three winners of the European Union’s investigative journalism prize in Serbia were announced on Tuesday at the EU Info Centre in Belgrade, with judges praising the work for its high quality.

First prize in this year’s EU awards for investigative journalism in Serbia went to Stevan Dojcinovic and Dragana Peco for their investigation into the connections between senior political figures and criminal clans entitled How Serbia’s Health Minister Helped a Criminal Avoid Trial.

Vladimir Kostic and Dina Djordjevic were awarded second prize for their articles entitled Small hydroelectric power plants: the state and companies connected to Vucic’s best man profit most and From Nigerian scheme to clandestine EPS procurement worth milions.

Third prize went to Milos Stanic for the article Toxic Taps: Arsenic in Water Stirs Cancer Fears.

The jury headed by Bojan Pancevski and including Valerie Hopkins and Predrag Blagojevic said they had a hard task evaluating the shortlisted applications due to their high quality.

“The European Union supports pluralism of media, and therein also investigative journalism as important form of reporting and informing citizens on matters of crucial importance,” said Noora Hayrinen, head of the political section at the EU delegation in Serbia.

All of the awarded journalists in Serbia are alumni of the BIRN programme, Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence (BFJE).

The EU awards have the overall goal of celebrating and promoting outstanding investigative journalists in the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well as improving the visibility of quality investigative journalism among the public in these countries.

The prize for investigative journalism is awarded through an EU-funded project entitled Strengthening Quality News and Independent Journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey, and applies to EU candidate and potential candidate countries Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey.

The award in Serbia is coordinated by the BIRN Serbia, while the regional consortium is led by the Balkan Investigative Regional Reporting Network’s BIRN Hub.

Milorad Ivanovic

Milorad is an editor at BIRN Serbia in Belgrade. He is also coordinator and trainer on the project “Technical Assistance to Public Service Media in the Western Balkans.”

Previously he was the editor-in-chief of the Serbian edition of Newsweek magazine, deputy editor-in-chief in Blic daily and executive editor in Novi magazine weekly. He is a contact person for the Western Balkans of the Dart Center for Trauma and Journalism. Milorad has had articles published in international newspapers such as The Sunday Times in the UK, El Mundo in Spain, Der Standard in Austria and the Washington Times. Milorad co-produced “Hidden Wounds”, a documentary film on post-traumatic stress disorder which was made in co-operation with the BBC. His investigations have included work on human trafficking, the employment of Balkan mercenaries by British and US security firms in Iraq, and arms trafficking from Ukraine into Serbia.

In 2007 Milorad was selected for the BIRN’s Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence (BFJE). Since 2009 he was a permanent jury member of the BFJE. He is also a jury member of the annual awards given by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, IJAS, and the US embassy in Belgrade.