Category: News and Events

Former FBI agent Stephen Salmieri will lecture at the Summer School during the session on undercover journalism. Salmieri worked for FBI for 29 years as an agent and Chief of Undercover Operations. During his work he infiltrated biker gangs, narcotics traffickers, terrorist groups and La Cosa Nostra. Salmieri lectures on the use of undercover techniques and is a consultant to the FBI, Serbia and other Balkan counties.

Luigi Rinnela was the chief officer on the case against drug lord Darko Saric in Italy. He was in charge of probing the Italian group of Saric associates. During the Summer School, Rinella will explain how the police handle international cases, how they work with colleagues from other countries and with journalists. He will give tips to journalists that they can apply to their own work.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2013 is organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and with support of King Baudouin Foundation and Belgium National Lottery and OSCE Mission in Kosovo, OSCE Mission to Serbia and USAID Macedonia.

Nalder has won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for national reporting in 1990 and another for investigative reporting in 1997. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer in public service in 1992. Nalder has published one book, ‘Tankers Full of Trouble’, which won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book award in 1994.

Nalder has taught interviewing and investigative reporting workshops in five countries, each year adding new techniques learned from journalists, police officers, FBI agents, lawyers, social workers and other practitioners.

Retired in January and now working on another book, he was a journalist for 42 years, last serving as national investigative reporter for the Hearst Newspapers chain (Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, etc).

During the Summer School, Nalder will teach investigative interview techniques aimed at convincing reluctant sources to talk.

The BIRN Summer School will be held at Lake Bled from August 25-31, 2013. The application procedure is open, and for more information about the Summer School, please check: www.balkaninsight.com/bss.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2013 is organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and with support of King Baudouin Foundation and Belgium National Lottery and OSCE Mission in Kosovo, OSCE Mission to Serbia and USAID Macedonia.

All those interested should apply online by following this link:  http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/birn-summer-school/birn-summer-school-2013-enrolment.

This year’s BIRN Summer School will be held at Bled Lake in Slovenia from August 25-31.

Experienced journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia can apply for full scholarships that will cover full-board accommodation, a travel fee up to 100 euros and BIRN’s published textbook  “Digging Deeper: A Guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans”.

Application for international participants is open until August 20.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2013 is organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and with support of King Baudouin Foundation and Belgium National Lottery and OSCE Mission in Kosovo, OSCE Mission to Serbia and USAID Macedonia.

The lead trainer this year will be David Leigh, formerly investigative editor at British newspaper The Guardian, now professor of reporting at the City University in London, and the winner of many awards, among them Investigative Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards.

Leigh was responsible for organising the publication of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables for The Guardian, for revealing the £1 billion paid to Saudi Prince Bandar by arms company BAE, and for exposing secret payments to former British prime minister’s son Mark Thatcher, among many other high-profile investigative stories. More about David Leigh you can find at: www.balkaninsight.com/en/birn-summer-school/david-leigh

This year’s BIRN Summer School at the beautiful lakeshore Hotel Savice will bring together 30 regional and international participants. The application procedure will open this week.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2013 is organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and with support of King Baudouin Foundation and Belgium National Lottery and OSCE Mission in Kosovo, OSCE Mission to Serbia and USAID Macedonia.

The participants of BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting formed six teams to pitch their investigative stories.

Out of six proposals, BIRN has decided to fund three investigations giving the winners an opportunity to research and develop their ideas into complete stories.

In months to come, journalists from all over the world will collaborate on investigations and their stories will be published on www.balkaninsight.com website.

The awarded stories cover wide range of topics, but all are tackling corruption in the Balkans. The reporting of organised crime and corruption was the principal focus of third BIRN Summer School.

This year’s Summer School was held in Mavrovo, Macedonia, and it finished on August 25.

Over the one-week programme, 28 journalists from the Balkans, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Australia, USA and Austria have had the opportunity to hone their skills and learn from some of the most prominent investigative journalists in the world.

BIRN gathered high profile trainers and panellists from the Balkans, Europe and USA, including Sheila Coronel, the director and professor of Toni Stable Center at Columbia University, Mark Schoofs from Pro Publica, Paul Lewis of the Guardian and Stephen Grey, Reuters special correspondent and author.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.

“Ultimately, your story, although it is based on data, comes down to human sources, to people,” Stephen Grey, an award-winning investigative journalist, told journalists at BIRN’s Summer School in Macedonia on Thursday.

Grey explained that sources are key to every investigative story, and approaching them and gaining and justifying their trust is a crucial skill for investigative journalists.

He also shared his experience in writing up investigations in an understandable and interesting way.

“It’s easy to get lost in all the material you’ve gathered, but you have to keep in mind what your story is about. Everything flows from what you have to say, from the journalism you did,” Grey said.

According to Paul Lewis, special projects editor for the Guardian newspaper, trained journalists make good use the advantages of the digital age to find sources.

Lewis said that social networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, allow journalists to look for sources online, giving as an example Guardian reports on death of Jimmy Mubenga, who died during deportation back to Angola.

“We needed to talk to people who were on a plane with him, so we released short news stating that we actually don’t know what happened and in some way, we invited people to approach us if they have information,” Lewis said.

He added that a source, a witness from the plane, contacted him on Twitter, where Lewis had posted a tweet calling on people who had been on the plane to come forward.

Grey is best known for revealing details of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program and has covered several national security issues. He has reported extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Am independent writer, based in London, he conducts research and works on newspaper articles, radio and TV broadcasts as well as a Reuters special correspondent in its global enterprise team.

Lewis Paul runs teams of journalists at the Guardian working on a range of investigations. He recently led “Reading the Riots”, a major research project into the causes and consequences of the 2001 riots in England in collaboration with the London School of Economics, LSE.

Paul lectures across Europe on the use of social media in journalism and teaches a masterclass in investigative reporting.

The third BIRN Summer School, held in Mavrovo, Macedonia, started on August 19. Over the one-week programme, journalists have had the opportunity to hone their investigating skills and learn from some of the most prominent investigative journalists in the world.

The lead trainer this year has been Sheila Coronel, Director and Professor of Professional Practice at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.

The panel debate, named “Investigating Corruption in the Balkans”, was part of the third BIRN Summer School on Investigative Reporting that is currently taking place in the Mavrovo mountain resort of western Macedonia.

German Filkov, head of a Macedonian anti-corruption watchdog, Center for Civil Communications, CCC, which follows media coverage on corruption, says that “the only way reporters can fight corruption is through investigative journalism”.

But their survey conducted inMacedonialast year showed that only 4 per cent of all media reports on corruption were investigative stories, all the others being short news, barely scratching the surface.

He also said the Macedonian state was slow to react to media reports on corruption.

“When in 2008 and 2010 we looked at how many cases the state prosecution had launched based on journalistic stories, the number was zero,” Filkov said.

Dragana Babovic, from the Montenegrin magazine Vijesti, said thatMontenegrohad taken some institutional steps towards boosting the fight against corruption and organized crime.

However, she noted that progress was not uniform. “Since 2007 we have had cars burned, staff beaten and all of these cases have not been solved,” she said.

“We have also had examples of state institutions, like the police or the prosecution, abusing their position and silencing reporters who investigate high-level corruption, involving top politicians, tycoons and office holders,” she added.

Lawrence Marzouk, editor of BIRN’s Pristina Insight newspaper, stressed that the media in the Balkans are often censored by power holders who resent investigative reports into corruption.

“Many long-term investigative researches have been initiated by NGOs, not by the media themselves,” he noted, adding that journalists who are overstretched by daily reporting tasks do not have an environment to conduct serious research.

Vuk Djuricic, fromCroatia’s special state prosecution office, USKOK, which fights corruption, praised the role of the media in pinpointing wrongdoing.

But, he said, “Sometimes the media may harm the process when they discover some criminal practice and publish it outright, thus undermining our own investigation”.

Calling for greater collaboration between journalists and the prosecution offices, Djuricic said that his office in Croatia was fully independent from external pressures when it came to launching indictments.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.

Journalists at the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting learned on Wednesday how to track money laundering, even when they have only one item of information.

Stevan Dojcinovic, a Belgrade investigative journalist, explained how he and his colleagues managed to connect Serbian tycoon Miroslav Miskovic with a major money laundering scam.

“We had only one piece of information, the name of the Belize-based offshore company that was laundering money inSerbia,” Dojcinovic recalled.

He explained how his team managed to connect Miskovic with the money inBelizeby looking at business register data, the real estate register and through field work.

Dojcinovic specialises in investigating links between organized crime and Balkan businessmen, privatisation deals, money laundering, private security agencies and the gambling industry.

Dojcinovic won the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and the National Award for Investigative Reporting in 2011 and 2012.

The one-week programme at the BIRN Summer School started on August 19 with about 28 journalists participating.

The lead trainer this year is Sheila Coronel, Director and Professor of Professional Practice at theToni Stabile Centerfor Investigative Journalism at ColumbiaUniversity.

The principal focus of the third annual BIRN Summer School is reporting on organised crime and corruption for print and broadcast media.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.

Helen Darbishire and Lawrence Marzouk.

Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info Europe, encouraged journalists to exercise their rights guaranteed by freedom-of-information laws and approach the EU to gather information.

“Don’t get discouraged by bureaucracy. I often got information I didn’t expect to get and was denied information I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t provide me,” Darbishire said on Tuesday, adding that everyone has the right to ask for any public document in any country.

She pointed out that journalists from non-EU countries can also benefit from approaching EU institutions, as the EU is more likely to provide them with relevant documents than their home-country institutions.

Lawrence Marzouk, editor of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Kosovo, shared his experience with practicing freedom-on-information laws in Kosovo and advised journalists to be persistent.

“It’s not enough just to send an email or a written request. We always call institutions and ask for information over and over again and insist as long as it’s necessary,” he said.

Marcus Lindemann, a producer and journalist from Germany who is responsible for TV reports mainly broadcast on ZDF, Europe’s largest TV station, trained BIRN Summer School participants in how to gather information online.

Lindemann taught use of Google search tools and the provision of simple “tricks” to optimize online searches.

The third BIRN Summer School started in Mavrovo, Macedonia, on August 19. Over the one-week programme journalists will hone their investigating skills with some of the most prominent investigative journalists in the world.

The lead trainer this year is Sheila Coronel, Director and Professor of Professional Practice at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University.

The principal focus of the BIRN Summer School is reporting on organised crime and corruption for print and broadcast media.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.

Photo by: Sinisa Jakov Marusic

The panel debate, titled “Censorship and self-censorship in in Balkan media – The enemy within ourselves,” was staged as part of the third BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting, in cooperation with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which is taking place in Mavrovo, western Macedonia.

BIRN’s regional director, Gordana Igric, presenting an overview of the state of media freedom in the Balkans, said that
 problematic media ownership by business and political tycoons was the source of much of the present censorship and self-censorship.

“Maybe we can do little against censorship but we can do something more against self-censorship,” she said, “which means activism, designing something to help journalists individually through a union, and providing other support and training.”

Igric advised Balkan journalists not to succumb to a common but mistaken belief that the European Union is going to help them against local strongmen who are suppressing free speech.

“Journalists in the Balkans have a romanticized view about the EU, that there is still somebody there who cares about freedom of the media, but practice shows that this is at the back of the list of their priorities,” Igric said.

Tamara Causidis, head of the Union of Macedonian Journalists, said that Macedonia faced “very vulgar, brutal and undisguised censorship, both political and economic”.

She said that censorship, self-censorship and negative selection were the prevailing trends in Macedonia’s media due to the widespread fear among journalists that they may be laid off if they report on controversial issues.

“We have examples where reports in the media are edited by marketing persons who sit in the board rooms,” she complained.

“Any attempt to counter such practice is prevented by the argument that the media outlet would be closed if this is not done, or that they [the journalists] will be fired.”

Arben Ahmeti, head of the Kosovo Association of Journalists and a reporter for the Kosovo newspaper, Koha Ditore, warned that in Kosovo, “where organized crime is the dominant force … journalists lose their power.

“We are trying to organize journalists. We should keep working together to find alternative ways [to avoid censorship],” Ahmeti said.

Mark Schoofs, veteran investigative journalist for the Wall Street Journal and editor at the US based ProPublica media organization, said censorship and self-censorship were not limited to poor, corrupt countries but were common in wealthy societies with long democratic traditions as well.

He urged reporters to take a more active role in their societies.

“When a situation in the country is dire, journalism is not about whether every report is perfectly balanced. We should not be afraid to defend an angle and have our own view,” he said.

“Journalism and activism has a place and is important [though] it does not mean that you write lies,” he added.

BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.