Presentation of the EFB issue paper on Media Freedom and Integrity in the Balkans

A presentation of the EFB issue paper written by Toby Vogel on Media Freedom and Integrity in the Balkans was staged by the European Fund for the Balkans (EFB) at the Sarajevo Media Center. The report, which focuses on the Balkan countries where media freedoms are most endangered - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia - was presented by Igor Bandović, Senior Programme Manager for the EFB, following a roundtable session with editors of BiH media and media support organizations. Emphasizing that the World Press Freedom Index identified the Western Balkans as the region with the biggest overall decline of media freedom in the world, Igor Bandović said that the key problems are found in the media ownership structure, censorship, self-censorship and various forms of intimidation of journalists. “Problems affecting freedom of the press are huge. In Macedonia, more than a hundred journalists are being wiretapped, in Serbia, not a single journalist murder case has been solved since 1991, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we have the blatant examples of the Klix.ba and BH Dani portals, as well as the recent case of Gordana Katana,” said Bandović, at the same time expressing hope that governments, international organizations and lobbyists would use this report to develop projects designed to empower the media. One of the participants in the discussion, Borka Rudić, Secretary General of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Journalist Association, stressed that BiH upholds a practice of leaving attacks against journalists unpunished. “Since 2006, 60 verbal or physical attacks were committed against journalists of both sexes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Regrettably, only nine such cases reached final verdict, and just two of these resulted in convictions against the perpetrators,” stated Rudić, adding that the authorities and even some international organizations only declaratively support media freedom. Towards the end of the discussion, the participants agreed that reforming laws and regulations is merely one course of action to take to strengthen the freedom of the press. This task also calls for a profound engagement in state policy, to understand and change the perception of media as pawns in high-stake games and the culture of impunity of those in power. Toby Vogel is a writer on foreign affairs based in Brussels. In 2007-2014 he was a staff writer on political affairs with European Voice, an independent weekly published in Brussels. He was previously editor with the Sarajevo bureau of Transitions Online. Before becoming a journalist, Vogel worked with the International Rescue Committee and the UN in New York, BiH and Kosovo, and he holds an MA degree in philosophy from the University of Zurich and a PhD in political sciences from the New School for Social Research. He is a senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council (Washington D.C. and Berlin). In 2013, Vogel was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation research fellow on security and humanitarian action at the City University of New York.