Category: News and Events

Reporters Zvezdana Vukojevic and Eldin Hadzovic were able to pinpoint a site where at least five bodies had initially been buried. The remains were later moved to an unknown location.

Dutch soldiers have said they dug the grave as an “emergency” measure during the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces.

A Dutch military report said between five and nine bodies were buried together but Bosnian sources say the figure might be higher.

The article was featured on the cover of HP/De Tijd, an influential Dutch news magazine. It was also picked up by more than 40 media outlets in the country.

The events in Srebrenica in summer 1995 continue to provoke intense debate among the Dutch. The failure of the country’s contingent of UN peacekeepers to prevent the killings has led to inquiries and the fall of a government.

The Dutch state has taken “responsibility” – but rejected “blame” – for the killings. Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb commander accused of ordering the attack, is currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague.

Zvezdana Vukojevic and Eldin Hadzovic are based as journalists in the Netherlands and Bosnia respectively. They hit upon the idea for the report during the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting.

Their article relied on information given by witnesses who had served in the Dutch military, and by a woman whose infant is believed to have been buried in the mass grave. The child was stillborn during the last days of the enclave, as it fell to Bosnian Serb forces.

The article was produced with the support of SCOOP, a network for investigative journalists in Eastern and South-eastern Europe. The first English version of the report will be published by Balkan Insight, BIRN’s online news service.

SCOOP has decided to fund five of the seven submitted investigative story proposals.

Journalists will cover a wide range of topics, from a local Kosovo story about work permit tax collection, through influences and connections between political parties and war veterans’ associations in Balkan states, to a story entitled ‘Follow the Garbage’, about how Albania is Italy’s new rubbish dump, a Netherlands’s cover-up of a mass grave and property related to organized crime in Croatia and Serbia.   

The investigative teams will complete their articles in the next six moths and BIRN will publish them on the popular www.balkaninsight.com website.

Davies, the journalist credited with virtually single-handedly leading the investigation into the hacking of phones by a British newspaper, also attached the basic tenets of reporting, force-fed to journalists, such as balance and the need to read all other sources of news.

He described this approach as “baffling, breathtaking and hideous”, adding that this led journalists to get “sucked up into a consensus”.

“We miss stories if we focus on this tiny little group of stories,” he added.

He said, instead, that reporters should take a moral judgment on issues and look for the unusual in everyday life.

His pursuit of the vast haul of documents obtained by Wikileaks was, he said, an example of how journalists failed to spot a story.

He said that when the arrest of the alleged whistleblower was covered in the press, reporters focused on this. “Very, very few thought to go to get the secrets,” he said.

Davies added that understanding how a source is thinking, and what he or she needs, is also critical in convincing them to talk.

“The finding of stories starts with the ‘hang-on-a-minute-moment’,” he said, explaining that this is when reporters should spot that the usual order of things is out of place and begin investigating.

On the phone hacking scandal, he said that he had a number of lucky breaks when key documents arrived just when he was facing pressure to prove more of the story.

The use of phone hacking as a journalistic technique would, he said, only be justified in “remote cases of extraordinary importance”.

Jim Mintz of Columbia University took reporters through the techniques in getting reluctant sources to cough up their secrets, thus allowing journalists to get closer to the truth.

Learning to listen and carefully posing questions were among the tips given by Gavin Rees of the Dart Center Europe in his workshop on how to interview victims of trauma.

Students in the afternoon sessions were taught by Helena Bengtsson, of the Swedish National Broadcasting Service, how to use Excel to organise data from investigations into a meaningful way, revealing potential stories that the journalists may not have thought of.

In the evening, a panel discussion was held with Paul Radu, OCCRP, and Paul Bradshaw, Online Journalism Blog, on social media and investigative reporting. The panel discussed the opportunities offered by social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, but also the potential pitfalls to avoid.

Now in its second year, BIRN’s Summer School brings together leading journalism experts to pass on their knowledge, teach investigative reporting skills and introduce the tools of the trade to a pan-European audience of media students and professional journalists operating in the industry’s most demanding and complex field.

Following this year’s opening introductions of trainers and students, lead trainer Sheila Colonel, professor and director of Columbia University’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, addressed the basic concepts of investigative journalism and explored, together with students, the mindset of the investigative journalist.

Her lecture was followed by a series of exercises and case studies that saw participants brainstorm to identify story ideas, discuss how to conceptualize a research and reporting strategy and how to prepare a story memo.

The students have now been divided into groups, each of which will refine its story ideas over the coming days, before presenting research strategies. The group deemed to have developed the best idea will receive funding to develop a full story.

The first day’s working sessions concluded with an insightful lecture by Helena Bengtsson, Database Editor at Swedish Television (SVT), who addressed the use of numbers and database tools to establish convincing facts and arguments to support an investigation.

The BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting is organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and supported by OSI London, the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Croatia, the OSCE Mission to Serbia, BIRN Kosovo and the U.S. Embassy in Macedonia.

The late night cruise for all Summer School participants will take place on Friday, August 26th, departing at 8.30pm and returning at 11pm.

Summer School attendees will enjoy a top class dinner aboard ship, during which they will be able to sample delectable local specialities and the region’s excellent Croatian wine.

The cruise will also provide the setting for the formal presentation of Summer School certificates for all participants and will include tours of the beautiful seaside towns of Volosko, Medveja and Moscenicka Draga.