Alena Beširević and Ingrid Gercama from the portal naratorium.ba, Sadeta Bajrović from the portal valterportal.ba, and journalist Amil Dučić from the portal fokus.ba are the winners of this year’s award for the best reporting on corruption. Congratulations!
In the premises of the “Europe House” in Sarajevo, organized by the Center for Media Development and Analysis (CRM@) , the awarding ceremony of the journalist award for the best research on corruption was held and the 15th birthday of the online magazine Žurnal was marked.
A total of 59 journalistic works were submitted to this year’s competition, which were published in the period from May 1, 2023, to April 30, 2024, in one of the Bosnian media. Members of the jury, journalists from the online magazine Žurnal, chose the best investigative media content on corruption:
– research by the authors Alena Beširević and Ingrid Gercama , published on the portal naratorium.ba, under the title “Frauds from the dark forest: Instead of mines, they “removed” 10,000 cubic meters of wood”
– research by the author Sadeta Bajrović , published on the portal valterportal.ba, under the title “DOSSIER OF VALTERA: The lives of children in the hands of irresponsible institutions”
– research by author Amil Dučić , published on the portal fokus.ba, under the title “Affair with digitization in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Falsified documentation is mentioned in the complaints!”
Eldin Karić , executive director of the Center for Media Development and Analysis, addressed the audience , emphasizing that he is proud of all his colleagues engaged in investigative journalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
“15 years ago, we somehow imagined that the Journal would look like it does today. We, as Journal, have used the past 15 years to fight against all deviations in society. In addition, a network of media engaged in investigative journalism in BiH has been developed, which are part of Umbrella, a network of investigative media in BiH. This shows us that the media scene in BiH is going in the right direction. One segment of the story concerning the development of investigative journalism is the now traditional awarding of journalistic awards for investigative journalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What I can say about this year’s event is that a large number of content has arrived and that their quality is getting better and better every year, and I think that this year the quality was at a very high level. It was very difficult to choose the best. In this way, I would like to draw attention to the fact that audio forms are becoming more and more popular, people are returning to audio forms again, and I think that it should be considered that this is an area where investigative journalism will develop.”
One of the award winners, Alena Beširević, expressed her satisfaction at receiving the award:
“I am pleased to receive this award. This story was created as part of a project, in cooperation with four other journalists from the Netherlands and France. He talks about a creative scheme according to which wood worth 800,000 marks was extracted from the Zavidovic forest, for which a little more than 70,000 was paid. No one was ever held accountable for that. I hereby thank you on behalf of Ingrid.”
Journalist Sadeta Bajrović also thanked for the award, stressing that the topic she worked on is somewhat known to the public, because last year the media published complaints from parents about faulty glucometers that were purchased by the Federation Health Insurance Institute and distributed to children up to 18 years of age:
“I covered the period from 2011 and reviewed how glucometers were previously procured. The information that I have obtained is that previously it was procured according to the principle of the cheapest offer, regardless of the quality of these sensitive medical devices used by children. The story was published at the beginning of May last year, and sometime on May 23, after the meeting, the Prime Minister of the Federation, Nermin Nikšić, wrote on his official Facebook profile that children should not be held hostage by the bureaucracy and that the problem will be solved soon. More than a year later, I would like to ask the Prime Minister what this means soon and what they have done so far, because children are still being given the same glucometers and strips.”
For the second year in a row, Fokus journalist Amil Dučić was awarded:
“Thank you very much for the award. As for this topic, it speaks of the fact that there is really almost no legal certainty in this country. It’s terrible what happened in this case. We have a pre-planned tender, amounting to 25 million, which was won by companies that are quite controversial, Sirius and OIV, a state-owned company from Croatia. It’s not satisfaction, but one piece of information that the Minister of Transport and Communications of Bosnia and Herzegovina should think about is that one of the companies got on the American blacklist.”
For the 12th year, the Center for Media Development and Analysis has organized this event in order to reward the best journalistic research produced in the past year and to promote investigative journalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The journalist award aims to promote the outstanding achievements of investigative journalists as well as to improve the visibility of quality journalism.
The Investigative Journalism Program is a five-year activity that, like today’s journalistic award ceremony for the best research on corruption, was made possible with the support of the American people through the American Organization for International Development – USAID.
The goal of the Investigative Journalism Program is to ensure the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have access to unbiased information and to increase the quantity and quality of media content on corruption. In just four years, the project developed a network of 17 independent investigative media, through which more than 45 investigative journalists and editors from Bosnia and Herzegovina operate.
JOURNAL’S 15TH BIRTHDAY
The Center for Media Development and Analysis is a Bosnian-Herzegovinian non-governmental organization founded in Sarajevo in 2009. Her first project was Online magazine Žurnal, the first online magazine in BiH dedicated to the fight against corruption.
Just this year, the Journal is celebrating its 15th birthday! Before the awarding of the Journalist Award, this anniversary was marked with the awarding of certificates of appreciation and the screening of the film “15 years in 15 minutes”, and the editor-in-chief of the online magazine Žurnal Selvedin Avdić addressed the audience :
“When we started Žurnal fifteen years ago, we only had experience from newspapers and magazines, we knew nothing about online media. From that first day, in the former playhouse in Nova Street, where we housed a two-member editorial staff, we started learning and haven’t stopped until today. There were hard lessons, some bad personnel solutions and even mistakes – it’s better to admit them ourselves than to have others mention them to us. But we didn’t give up, we recovered, got stronger, expanded the editorial office and the network of collaborators, came up with new approaches to readers, made videos, comics, printed newsletters, books, manuals, composed music, shot movies, documentary series, changed the design… We thought that only by continuous work, transformation and adaptation, we can survive. Nevertheless, we never lost sight of what we wanted from the very beginning – to create an incorruptible media that would professionally inform the public.
We still believe that corruption, in all its forms, is the biggest problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It affects everyone equally, except those who say it doesn’t exist. For such a claim, over the past years, we have collected a huge amount of evidence, they are in the archive of the Journal, which is available to all readers, as well as judicial institutions.”
Special thanks were given to the executive editor of the online magazine Žurnal, Amarildo Gutić , and cartoonist Đoko Ninković , whose new cartoons you can see every Sunday on Žurnal.
As part of the celebration of the 15th birthday of Žurnal, the exhibition “Online magazine Žurnal” was also presented, which featured photographs by Žurnal’s photographer Adi Keba and cartoons by Đoka Ninković, which marked the period behind us.
Raising awareness of the existence of corruption and its devastating consequences, engaging in investigative journalism based on facts, objective, without sensationalism, written with the necessary level of knowledge and expertise, are the core of the mission of the Center for Media Development and Analysis and the Journal.
Source: zurnal.info
