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From left to right: Tatjana Lazarevic, Tanja Maksic and Kreshnik Gashi during the lauch of the report on Kosovo and Serbia media reporting on relations between two countries, November 3, 2023 in Caglavica. Photo: BIRN

Media from Kosovo and Serbia only partially uphold standards when reporting on relations between the two countries, a new report from BIRN Serbia and Internews Kosova has concluded.

The report, “Media Reporting on Serbia and Kosovo Relations: Conflict or Cooperation”, published on Friday found out that about a third of media stories are related to “incidents”, while the others are dedicated to diplomatic negotiations and policy efforts.

“Mainstream media fail to let all sides be heard. Sources are limited, the majority of them are high-level officials promoting their own agendas. Potentials for cooperation are also rarely visible through reporting. Direct quotes of Albanian in Serbian media and vice versa are rarely heard,” it says.

Tanja Maksic, from BIRN Serbia, said that during the reporting period, the media intensively reported on Kosovo-Serbia issues. “In the seven media alone that we have selected, we found around 50 news articles produced every day, most of them short news,” Maksic said.

Kreshnik Gashi from Internews Kosova said media reporting is too much focused on transmitting politicians’ statements.

“Politicians continue to be the main source of information for media and this is problematic. Journalist should have filters when they decide to transmit their statements … their statements should go through checks,” Gashi said.

The report says the perspectives and lives of ordinary people on the ground are rarely presented, not only in terms of dealing with everyday problems caused by unresolved political situations but also in terms of potential for mutual cooperation.

“Although not many breaches of journalistic ethics were mapped by this research, we could identify some narratives and strategies that derive from different editorial policies and hamper the objectiveness of reporting,” it added.

The report urges media and journalists to expand the base of their sources, give “others” chance to voice their opinions and highlight topics that also emphasize cooperation and peace-building.

It also suggests that governments and decision-makers should be held accountable and their policies questioned, including the ones on mutual relations.

The report concludes that times of crisis again emphasize the importance of robust media systems that nourish independent and professional media outlets.

“The media plays a crucial role in disseminating timely and accurate information during crises. It helps the public understand the situation, potential risks, and government responses. It also holds governments and crisis actors accountable for their actions,” it says.

Tolga Sardan, a veteran investigative journalist who is on trial for allegedly spreading disinformation after he reported on judicial corruption, was released from custody on Monday but banned from travelling abroad.

“I only did journalism. I stand behind what I wrote,” Sardan told reporters in Istanbul after he was released.

An Istanbul court ordered Sardan’s arrest on November 1. He is accused of “overt propagation of misleading information” in his reporting on corruption in the Turkish judiciary. His trial is still ongoing.

Sardan’s article for the T24 online magazine on October 31 outlined the content of an intelligence report prepared for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about corruption in the judiciary in Istanbul. Access to the article was also blocked by a court decision on November 2.

Sardan rejected the allegation that he spread disinformation. “I would like to underline that I only worked as a journalist to inform the public. I absolutely do not accept the accusation made regarding the alleged crime,” he said in his testimony to police.

After Sardan’s arrest, two other journalists, Dincer Gokce and Cengiz Erdinc, were also detained by police under the so-called disinformation law, but later released.

Journalists’ unions condemned the use of the law, which came into force last year, to target journalists.

“Journalist Tolga Sardan was released today after six days of unjust imprisonment, with an international travel ban. It was a law that should never have been passed, an arrest that should never have happened,” the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS said in a statement on Monday.

The TGS and other journalists’ organisations will stage a protest for the revocation of the law in front of the Constitutional Court.

Gazeteci #TolgaŞardan 6 günlük haksız tutukluluğun ardından bugün itiraz üzerine yurtdışı çıkış yasağı ile tahliye edildi.
Hiç çıkarılmaması gereken bir yasa, hiç olmaması gereken bir tutuklamaydı…
Sansür Yasası TCK 217/A’nın iptali için 8 Kasım’da Anayasa Mahkemesi’nde… pic.twitter.com/lGq8EdUXIv

— Gazeteciler Sendikası (@TGS_org_tr) November 6, 2023

The silent protest will be held on November 8 while the court discusses the legality of the disinformation law, after the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP appealed to the court.

The Media and Law Studies Association, MLSA wrote in a letter to the Constitutional Court on Monday that at least 13 journalists have been detained so far because of the so-called disinformation law.

“This law contradicts the principles of freedom of expression, as well as press freedom, enshrined in the constitution,” the letter said.

Media organisations and rights groups say that under President Erdogan, Turkey has become one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, as well as exerting pressure on the media through court cases, fines and prison sentences.

Turkey ranked 165th out of 180 countries worldwide in 2023 in the latest global press freedom index issued by the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders.

Disinformation sweeps Balkans over Israel-Hamas conflict

Throughout October, a pattern of disinformation unfolded across the Balkan region, driven by the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. As each country in the region grappled with its own set of challenges, false narratives and misleading content spread rapidly through social media channels.

In Croatia, October 10 saw the spread of a baseless claim that Israel had deliberately bombed the Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius in Gaza, an assertion later debunked by several fact-checking websites, including AP and AFP. The church itself confirmed its undamaged state. Eight days later, a Croatian Facebook user posted a video snippet of US President Joe Biden’s speech in Tel Aviv, falsely contending that he had declared his birthplace as Israel. The official transcript clarified that Biden had made no such statement.

In Hungary, on October 16, a misleading video circulated on Hungarian-language Facebook pages portraying what was claimed to be the Hamas attack on Israel. In fact, the footage came from celebrations at a football match in Algeria, AFP and Reuters revealed. Ten days earlier, another video created confusion, allegedly showing Hamas paragliders landing in Israel. AFP fact-checkers found that the video was recorded in the vicinity of a Cairo football field, in front of a military academy.

People wave Palestinian flags during a rally in solidarity with the Palestinians, in Zagreb, Croatia, 25 October 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/GEORGI LICOVSKI

North Macedonia encountered its own disinformation challenges. On October 17, a Facebook user shared heart-wrenching photographs of child victims of war alongside an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, falsely asserting they were casualties of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Fact-checkers identified that these photos were from the earlier conflict in Syria. On October 15, another Macedonian Facebook user propagated a conspiracy theory that unwarrantedly blamed the Jewish population for a so-called “great reset”, aimed at world domination. On October 18, an online media portal exacerbated the misinformation by sharing a video from 2021, suggesting it was a recent incident of Egyptian humanitarian aid vehicles halted at the Gaza border.

Kosovo also witnessed two instances of digital deception, both connected to the Israel-Hamas Conflict. In the first case, a manipulated image circulated on October 20, suggesting that Atletico Madrid fans displayed a Palestinian flag in a stadium. Closer examination revealed that this image was digitally fabricated using AI technology. The second incident occurred on October 14, when a Facebook page named “Bota Islame” disseminated a misleading video. This video, from 2017, was falsely presented as a recent statement by the Emir of Qatar regarding the conflict in Gaza. The purpose of this disinformation was to create a deceptive narrative about Qatar’s response to the Israel-Hamas Conflict.

Journalists targeted online in Romania and Turkey

In both Turkey and Romania, the complex interplay of digital rights and the Israel-Palestine conflict poses significant challenges to journalists, prompting discussions about online freedom, disinformation, and responsible discourse.

In Turkey, as the Israeli-Hamas conflict escalated, Turkish journalist Nevsin Mengü found herself in the crosshairs of disinformation campaigns. Fabricated WhatsApp messages were widely shared on social media, falsely attributed to Mengü and linked to the conflict. In response, Mengü said she would initiate legal proceedings to combat this misinformation and defend her professional reputation.

Another case in Romania raised concerns about the limits of free expression in the context of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Prominent media figure Ion Cristoiu had his YouTube channel temporarily suspended after discussing the conflict and being accused of promoting hate speech and violence.

A view of Google offices in New York, New York, USA, 12 September 2023.Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

Google eventually reinstated his channel on October 31, following inquiries by journalists at Libertatea. YouTube representatives found that: “After examination, we determined that the video does not violate the community rules.”

Women and elderly targeted and tricked online

In October, a number of scams unfolded in Serbia and Croatia, with a shared and troubling theme; women and the elderly were disproportionately targeted by a variety of online exploitation and fraudulent schemes. In Albania, an elderly woman also fell victim to an online privacy violation.

In Serbia, multiple cases of senior citizens and women falling victim to various cybercrimes occurred.

On October 3, a case in Serbia exemplified the digital rights challenges facing its elderly citizens. The government had promised pensioners discounts upon presenting pensioner cards. However, significant delays in distribution of the cards have left many seniors without these benefits, rendering them vulnerable to fraudulent activities. Privacy concerns, as highlighted by Jovan Tamburić, President of the Union of Retired Military Personnel of Serbia, also loom large due to the unnecessary collection of personal data through these cards.

In two separate incidents, Serbian women became ensnared in online scams. The first incident unfolded on October 2, when a woman became a victim of an online shopping scam through Instagram. In another case, on October 22, another Serbian woman, searching for a soulmate, unwittingly engaged with a counterfeit account posing as a Turkish actor. Over time, she transferred over 13,000 euros to this fraudulent account before realizing the deception.

In Croatia, similar trends emerged. A 64-year-old fell victim to computer fraud on October 1, losing nearly 200 euros after unknown fraudsters used her stolen bank card for online purchases. A 50-year-old resident in Slavonski Brod reported a fraud incident to the police on October 10. On October 9, a fake broker contacted the victim, falsely claiming an increase in funds in their account. The victim unwittingly provided their bank card details, resulting in the withdrawal of over 3,000 euros. Police are investigating this case.

A man sells roasted chestnuts in Belgrade, Serbia, 14 November 2018.Photo: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC

Two additional cases featured a 68-year-old pensioner and a 66-year-old individual on October 9 and 5 respectively. In the first incident, the pensioner lost 250 euros after responding to a social media ad offering three-wheeled scooters for disabled individuals. When she transferred the money to the provided bank account, she realized it was associated with a sports betting company, prompting her to report the incident to the police. In the second case, a 66-year-old individual from Split lost over 20,000 euros by investing in cryptocurrencies through a virtual wallet. The victim was convinced by an unknown person who added his mobile number to a group chat on a messaging app that cryptocurrency mining investments were lucrative. After transferring the money to the virtual wallet, he discovered that the funds had vanished, resulting in a loss of more than 20,000 euros. A criminal investigation is being conducted by the police.

On October 10, a distressing incident came to light in Albania. In Divjaka, an 82-year-old woman fell victim to a brutal attack by burglars attempting to rob her home. The JOQ media outlet shared harrowing images of the victim, her face covered in blood, along with her full name and place of residence. The media also reported that the victim’s daughter had issued a stark warning, vowing that unless justice prevailed, they would pursue a blood feud against the identified assailants.

Pattern of privacy violations and threats in Albania and Montenegro

In the realm of online violations in Albania, a recurring pattern is the publication of sensitive content, including videos of violence and abuse, revealing private lives, or disclosing personal information, often accompanied by threats and security endangerment.

On October 6, an alarming case exposed a paedophile group who had been utilizing the messaging app Telegram to disseminate explicit materials featuring children who had fallen prey to sexual abuse within. The circulation of these images not only victimized these children further but also posed a grave threat to their safety and well-being. Another video shared online, seemingly depicting an incident of classroom violence, raised questions of authenticity; both the public and authorities were uncertain about the situation’s exact nature.

On October 1, an online media platform exposed the identity of a mother involved in a sexual abuse case in a small Albanian town. The publication included her age, name, and surname, indirectly leading to the potential identification of the victim in such a close-knit community. The media also stated that this woman deceived a man through social networks and took money from him.

Montenegro has recently revealed a similar pattern through a video that gained widespread attention last October 6. The video features a minor who appears visibly frightened, displaying evident facial bruises and a blood-stained T-shirt as he offers an apology to his aggressors. The footage strongly suggests that the boy had just endured a severe episode of physical violence.

Bosnia has been covered by Elma Selimovic, Aida Trepanić and Azem Kurtic, Croatia by Matej Augustin, Hungary by Ákos Keller-Alánt, Kosovo by Diedon Nixha, Montenegro by Djurdja Radulovic, North Macedonia by Bojan Stojkovski and Goce Trpkovski, Romania by Adina Florea, Serbia by Tijana Uzelac and Kalina Simic, Turkey by Hamdi Fırat Büyük.

The Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform has called on Greece to “drop the investigation” into Greek journalists Kostas Vaxevanis, and Vangelis Triantis for their report on mismanagement of public funds and asked it to “uphold the protection of journalistic sources”.

The Athens Prosecutor’s Office in early November summoned the publisher of the media outlet Documento Vaxevanis and journalist Triantis to testify as suspects for violating official secrecy due to their investigation of the state’s public procurements during the pandemic.

“Investigative journalism is being criminalized. It is a clear attempt to intimidate any journalist who will want to do their job in the future in similar cases and is essentially a blow against our country’s freedom of the press,” Triantis told BIRN.

In February 2023, Documento published part of the audit report of the Economic Crimes Enforcement Agency, SDOE. The report revealed the direct contracts awarded by the then-Secretary General of Anti-Crime Policy, Sofia Nikolaou, aimed to combat the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. SDOE’s conclusion was that the state lost €2 million.

The Economic Crime Prosecutor commissioned the SDOE audit after the opposition SYRIZA party filed a criminal complaint against Nikolaou in May 2021. The prosecutor closed the case, outlining that SDOE’s conclusions were not scientifically acceptable, there was no damage to the state, and there were no indications of possible over-invoicing.

One day after the publication of Vaxevanis’s and Triantis’s report, the Deputy Prosecutor at the Supreme Court and former head of the Economic Crime Prosecutor’s Office, Christos Bardakis, asked the Athens Prosecutor’s Office to investigate how the SDOE report came into their hands.

“The pro-government media here in Greece is currently silent about … cases like those where the prosecution of journalists is attempted. There is a silence in cases of journalists not favored by the government,” Triantis claimed.

“I am glad that the Council of Europe, international media organizations, and BIRN, are raising the issue; it is very important for us because here in Greece, the freedom of the press does not work, and there are serious operational issues regarding the rule of law and the protection of journalists,” he added.

The initial findings of a report published on September 28 by eight international media freedom organisations said that press freedom in Greece was under “sustained threat” from the impact of the “Predatorgate” spyware surveillance scandal, abusive lawsuits and physical threats against journalists, as well as economic and political pressures on media.

Vaxevanis and Triantis are due to testify on 20 November. The court is to decide whether to bring criminal charges against them.

Journalists’ unions have called on Turkish authorities to release Tolga Sardan, a veteran investigative journalist with T24 online gazette, who was arrested on Wednesday after he reported on judicial corruption.

“Tolga Sardan should be released immediately. None of us accept this intimidation. We are journalists, we will continue to do journalism!,” eight journalists’ unions and organisations, including the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, the Turkish Journalists’ Association and the Press Council said in a joint statement on Thursday.

The joint statement added that the so-called disinformation law accepted last year in parliament is being used to “silence, intimidate and keep the press in line”. The same law was used to arrest Sardan.

“We are journalists, we will continue to shout that journalism is not a crime, to speak out about corruption despite pressure and threats, to practise journalism despite all tyrannic pressures, and to work for the public’s right to receive news,” the joint statement said.

An Istanbul court on Wednesday ordered Sardan’s arrest after a brief police detention. The stated reason is “overt propagation of misleading information” in his reporting on corruption in the Turkish judiciary.

Another journalist, Dincer Gökçe, from Halk TV, was detained on the same day and released under judicial control measures regarding the same charge.

Sardan’s article in T24 online gazette on October 31 explained the content of an intelligence report prepared for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about corruption in the judiciary in Istanbul.

In his response to the allegations against him, Sardan said in his police testimony: “I would like to underline that I only worked as a journalist to inform the public. I absolutely do not accept the accusation made regarding the alleged crime.”

Media organisations and rights groups say that under President Erdogan Turkey has become one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, also exerting pressure on the media through court cases, fines and prison sentences.

Turkey ranked 165th out of 180 countries in 2023 in the latest press freedom index issued by the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF.

Turkey’s Ministry of Justice said on Thursday that the parole of Ogun Samast – killer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 – for “good behaviour”,  is legal.

“His sentence was executed in accordance with the general provisions of Law No. 5275,” the ministry said in a statement. It underlined that he had requested transfer to an open prison five times and probation two times.

Dink, editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos and a globally known Armenian figure, was shot dead in broad daylight as he left his Istanbul office in January 2007.

Samast, a Turkish ultra-nationalist, was only 17 years old when he murdered the journalist. He was sentenced by a juvenile court to life in jail, reduced to 22 years and 10 months due to his young age.

Journalists, unions and the opposition expressed outrage over the early release.

“While the darkness behind the murder of journalist Hrant Dink is still unclear, his murderer Ogün Samast is released on conditional release due to good behaviour. Journalists are in prison, the hitmen who murdered them are free!,” the Journalists’ Union of Turkey said on Wednesday.

The leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, Ozgur Ozel, said Samast’s release would “end the conversation” on justice in the country.

“Samast followed, practised and planned and killed Hrant Dink. If he is released today due to good behaviour, we are at the end of the conversation,” Ozel said.

The co-chair of the Turkish Human Rights Association, HID, Eren Keskin, also condemned the release.

“This is such a dystopian country! [Kurdish politicians] Gulten Kisanak and Selahattin Demirtas, [human rights activist] Osman Kavala and [parliamentarian] Can Atalay are in jail only for their thoughts, but a murderer is free!” he said.

Samast’s connections with nationalist groups have been in question since the murder. After his detention in 2007, some security officers posed with Samast along with Turkish flags, praising his action in killing an Armenian.

Dink’s newspaper Agos claimed that Samast had benefited from a degree of official protection. “There was another file pending at the Supreme Court for Samast. Samast was not convicted of being a member of an organisation. Dink family lawyers objected .. Afterwards, the Court also sentenced Samast to membership in an organisation. However, the Supreme Court of Appeals evaluated Samast’s membership of the organisation within the scope of Article 220 and placed it within the statute of limitations,” Agos wrote on Thursday. Thus, Agos said, Samast did not receive any additional punishment for being a member of an organisation.

Two other ultra-nationalists Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel were also sentenced for the murder. Hayal was sentenced to life in prison and 14 years and 22 months. Tuncel was sentenced to 96 years in prison.

The Donbas Media Forum was established in 2015, one year after Russia’s first attack on Ukraine, when it took control of portions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – around a tenth of Ukraine’s territory.

Eastern Ukrainian journalists had decided to unite and organise themselves to exchange experiences and provide mutual support in an information war that demanded a collective effort against disinformation and Russian propaganda.

In 2017, when I was first invited to the Forum, my role was to share my insights as a journalist who covered the 1998-99 Kosovo war. There were experiences worth sharing from Kosovo: some of our endeavours were successful, such as opening doors for international media to cover the massacres that Serbian forces were committing – coverage that eventually influenced NATO policy-makers to lead a bombing campaign against Serbia.

However, I also spoke about what we had failed to do: document the war crimes that were committed with enough precision to be able to prosecute these crimes not just internationally but domestically.

Lessons from Kosovo for Ukraine

Jeta Xharra speaking at the Donbas Media Forum in Kyiv on November 10. Photo: BIRN.

I explained that when I began covering the Kosovo war as a translator for the BBC News, I and many of my colleagues were just 19 or 20 years old, so we faced a profound mental shock. Without any prior experience of war reporting, we found ourselves confronted with the bodies of murdered children, people burned in their homes, rape and the plight of refugees, as well as the paramilitaries and Serbian police we had to talk our way past on the way to the war zone.

In 2017, the journalists from eastern Ukraine at the Forum seemed to be waiting for the war to escalate and they were taking notes because they were certain a second Russian invasion would happen.

“If the worst is bound to happen, make sure it is filmed, documented and archived” was the lesson I conveyed, because that was precisely what I learned from the foreign journalists who came to Kosovo in 1998 after having covered the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s.

Now, as I returned to the Forum in November 2023, it was clear that the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the most comprehensively-filmed war with the most well-documented war crimes ever. And with almost 9,000 accredited journalists, it has been the most intensively-covered war too.

Nearly 15,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, 37 of them journalists. The faces and stories of these journalists who died were displayed on panels in the main hall of the Forum. Some of them had been guests at previous forums.

Reading the stories of the journalists who were killed, I remembered that 25 to 30 years have passed since the start of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and no country in the region has a place where you can read the stories of the journalists killed in our wars. I was pleased that the Ukrainians are doing things differently.

There’s another aspect in which the Ukrainians been successful: they have been much more diligent in documenting war crimes. Their prosecutors were not complaining, like in my country, about their low salaries or the fact that they have no assistants, bodyguards, cars or electricity, but rather, they immediately went out into difficult terrain to collect evidence after Russian massacres of their citizens in Bucha and elsewhere.

They are doing what was not done in Kosovo. After 25 years, many witnesses to many massacres are slowly dying before the Kosovo Prosecution has bothered to formally collect their testimonies.

The Ukrainians are also successful in highlighting their victories as they happen. An exhibition organised by the National Museum of Military History of Ukraine has been opened in front of the Foreign Ministry in Kyiv, where they have exhibited the tanks, missiles and other military equipment that Russian troops left behind in the areas where they were defeated by the Ukrainian Army, a force which no one expected to be able to resist Russia, which has one of the largest armies in the world.

In Kosovo, in the National Museum, there is not much more to see than the jacket of wartime OSCE official William Walker, which, 23 years after the war, does not even have a sign explaining its significance – how Walker became a vital American witness to a massacre of civilians in the village of Recak. There is no narrative, nothing about the number of people killed nor how they were killed, and no background information about the person who wore that jacket and why he became so important for the history of Kosovo.

Documenting war crimes as they happen

A display at the Donbas Media Forum commemorating journalists killed during the war in Ukraine. Photo: BIRN.

I was invited to the Forum to speak about how we were able to document war crimes, and I talked about the efforts BIRN journalists made to convince a Serbian paramilitary, Zoran Raskovic, to speak publicly about the crimes committed by his murderous group, the Jackals, in villages in western Kosovo where they killed hundreds of ethnic Albanians.

Raskovic talked to BIRN 15 years after the war. While I was speaking, Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist from The Reckoning Project, looked me straight in the eye and couldn’t wait for the end of the discussion to whisper to me: “We will only need two years for the Russians to admit what they have done, not 15!”

Not only can the Ukrainians visualise their victory over Russia, but they are also not wasting a moment, using all possible methods at their disposal, including AI, to document war crimes in real time. They even reckon that many Russians will testify in court because they have been forcibly mobilised and sent from their homes to fight in Ukraine.

Following our discussion, Nataliya Gumenyuk screened her documentary ‘The Hospital That Was Taken Hostage’, which tells the story of how the hospital in the city of Snihurivka operated for nine months in 2022 under occupation, overseen by the Russian army. All remaining staff members at the hospital were women who’d had to negotiate with the Russians to be able to stay and treat patients including wounded civilians and Ukrainian soldiers as well as the occupying troops.

One of the doctors interviewed in the film, Hanna Tkachuk, was one of the only dentists left in the occupied area.

“When I saw that they wanted to drive us out, I offered the Russian soldiers to fix their teeth, on the condition that they let us take care of the patients and wounded people we had in the hospital. They told me, ‘Until now, the Ukrainian doctors have only treated us if we were injured,’” said Tkachuk.

At first, the Russian soldiers threatened the hospital staff, saying that they would kill them. But after Tkachuk had treated one Russian soldier, he told her: “How could I kill you now that you saved my life?”

‘New thinking is going to be needed’

Alex Anderson (centre) speaking at the Donbas Media Forum on November 11. Photo: BIRN.

Alex Anderson, a BIRN consultant on Ukraine, also spoke at the Forum in a discussion focused on approaches to areas liberated by Ukraine and the role of journalists there. He discussed his comparative experience of Kosovo in late 1999 and of the Ukrainian army’s de-occupation of a conurbation in the Donbas in summer 2014. In both places, a policing and justice deficit contributed to a cocktail of vigilante journalism, predation and killings.

He suggested that journalists take an activist role in de-occupied areas, approaching questions of people’s collaboration with the Russian occupiers in a spirit of genuine enquiry and understanding of the role of circumstances rather than focusing on retribution.

“As – we hope – Ukraine begins to de-occupy not only more of the areas overwhelmed last year by invading Russian troops, but also areas whose violent separation in 2014 was abetted by many local sympathisers of Russia, and a decade since the ‘LPR’ [Russian-sponsored Luhansk People’s Republic] and ‘DPR’ [Donetsk People’s Republic] made collaborators of most of the remaining population, new thinking, new policies, new messaging, arguably new laws are going to be needed [to keep people from fleeing the area],” suggested Anderson.

“To rebuild, Ukraine needs to preserve its people, everywhere,” he added. He cited West Germany’s post-World War II transformation from Nazism and the “economic and moral miracle” that followed in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Covering corruption during wartime

Camera operator Natalia Dovbysh in front of a supermarket that was hit by a Russian strike in Odesa. Photo: BIRN.

In the southern port city of Odesa, Natalia Dovbysh works with the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, which runs INTENT, a media platform covering the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson areas.

She took me to see a supermarket in the city that was bombed by the Russians during the summer, an incident she covered as a camera operator.

“I live near here and I heard the rockets heading here,” said Dovbysh, who comes from the eastern city of Mykolaiv, which suffered large-scale damage from Russian attacks in 2022 but has more recently begun to rebuild despite continued shelling.

“I recently went to my family in Mykolaiv. The city has risen like a phoenix,” said Dovbysh. “Two months ago when I visited, there was no electricity and many had left the country. It has now been revived.”

Dovbysh said that many stories published by INTENT continue to address corruption, a problem that has persisted despite the war.

She explained how Gennadi Trukhanov, the mayor of Odesa, who was once seen as pro-Russian but rebranded himself as a Ukrainian patriot after the start of the full-scale invasion, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly stealing public funds and later released pending trial. In 2018, it came to light that Trukhanov had registered luxury flats in London in his daughter’s name. He denies any wrongdoing.

Valeri Bolgan, editor-in-chief at INTENT, said that as well as corruption, the media outlet is also increasingly reporting on war crimes and the problem of Russian propaganda.

“Many people believed the Russian propaganda until recently, but now I think that people are waking up from a Russian sleep, from Russian dreams, and have started to speak Ukrainian increasingly more,” he said.

“If around 20 to 30 per cent of the people spoke Ukrainian before, now half of the people in Odesa are speaking Ukrainian. They no longer listen to Russian music, they don’t watch Russian TV.”

Bolgan explained how he was also involved with civil society organisations that had initiated the removal of Russian symbols and statues from Odesa when the city came under attack, including a statue of Russian empress Catherine the Great that was removed from the city centre and placed in the city museum’s warehouse.

With the war continuing, I asked Dovbysh if she knew that Kosovo has a programme to host Ukrainian journalists who need a place to shelter for a while. But she explained that she would never consider this as an option.

“I don’t want to leave my country,” she declared. “In fact, as a camera operator, I know how to use drones, and my country and our military needs drone operators – if it comes down to it, if they need me, I would rather join the army than flee Ukraine.”

Jeta Xharra is a BIRN Kosovo director and editor-in-chief.

This article was made possible by Donbas Media Forum, which supported the trip to Kyiv, and Political Tours, which supported the trip to Moldova and Odesa.

The launch of BIRN Kosovo’s report on disinformation, ,The Story of Our Lies’, in Pristina on Monday. Photo: BIRN

Kosovo needs to adopt a media literacy strategy and include it as a subject in elementary and secondary school curricula in order to face the growing challenges posed by disinformation, said a report published by BIRN Kosovo on Monday.

The report, ‘The Story of Our Lies’, warned that dealing with disinformation is a serious problem for public institutions and decision-makers because officials and employees “lack adequate knowledge about disinformation, including how to identify and address it”.

BIRN surveyed around 50 participants from various professions, including teachers, doctors, judges, and prosecutors, to assess public officials’ level of knowledge about disinformation and skills to deal with it.

The survey found that more than half of them are not equipped with the necessary knowledge to tackle the issue.

“The situation in the field is very concerning. If a teacher has no basic knowledge of what disinformation is, it’s problematic for him to teach pupils about disinformation. The same goes with judges who have trusted non-verified news,” said Kreshnik Gashi, co-author of the report.

Alban Zeneli, a professor at the Department of Journalism at Pristina University, said that the Kosovo government should include media literacy in its elementary and secondary school curricula.

“Kosovo has become a fertile ground for the production and dissemination of disinformation and this is mainly linked with elementary and secondary education which is obliged to produce schoolchildren who should be able to make a judgment about the content they read,” Zeneli said.

The report said that some media have become creators and amplifiers of disinformation due to the absence of sustainable funding and sufficient staff, as well as non-transparent editorial policies and external influences.

It noted that Kosovo remains vulnerable to disinformation from inside and outside the country as mechanisms to monitor the dissemination of disinformation have not been established and judicial institutions have proved to be unable to handle such cases.

“With the meteoric spread of the use of the internet and social media in Kosovo, distributors of fictitious news have found social media platforms a fertile ground to push forward their malicious agenda and create confusion among audiences about which news is true and which is false,” ambassador Tomas Szunyog, head of the European Union’s office in Kosovo, said at the launch of the report in Pristina.

The report was based on data that BIRN Kosovo gathered from October 2022 to April 2023. The research aimed to identify disinformation narratives created within Kosovo, but also external efforts to spread falsehoods and cause destabilisation.

“As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, Kosovo also suffered from Russian disinformation campaigns aimed at the entire Western Balkans,” the report noted.

“In Kosovo this information was largely aimed at impeding the country’s NATO and EU integration processes, thus influencing Kosovo’s relationship with the outside world. Internally, however, the Russian disinformation was aimed at straining already tense interethnic relations between Kosovo Serbs and Kosovo Albanians,” it said.

Galit Peleg, Israel’s non-resident ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, said in a letter on Monday that Amir Gross Kabiri, an Israeli citizen who has been accused of online harassment by Sarajevo’s mayor Benjamina Karic, should not be silenced because of his views.

Mayor Karic has filed criminal complaints against Kabiri, the president of the Abraham Group and the CEO of Bosnia-based metal company Aluminij, for repeatedly harassing her by sending her distressing images, accusing her of supporting Hamas and criticising her stance on the killings of civilians in the Palestinian territories and Israel.

“We believe that the state institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina must not become a political tool to silence criticism, and that Bosnia and Herzegovina must steadfastly defend the democratic rights of all, including Mr. Kabiri, to express their opinions, including the democratic right to call on elected officials to condemn the crimes of Hamas,” Peleg’s letter stated.

The letter was addressed to the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Bosniak and Croat-dominated Federation entity, the US embassy in Sarajevo and Office of the High Representative, the international overseer of the implementation of the peace deal that ended the Bosnian war.

Peleg urged the Bosnian authorities to “resist political pressure and carry out their duties in accordance with the law” and said the Israeli embassy will “closely follow” any possible violation of international law and human rights in the case of Kabiri.

Karic alleges that Kabiri has been harassing her on social media for several months after she declined to cover up a Bosnian war-related plaque on Sarajevo’s City Hall to mark Israel’s independence day in May.

Since the escalation of the conflict in Gaza Strip in early October, Karic has repeatedly condemned the killings of civilians in the Palestinian territories and supported pro-Palestinian rallies in the capital.

Kabiri has claimed that because of his “legitimate criticism”, Karic and other politicians have been exerting “pressure on the authorities to isolate me and silence the truth”.

The Sarajevo mayor has received widespread support in political circles and from members of the public, as well as from the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Federal Police Administration said that it is currently investigating Karic’s allegations against Kabiri.

Greece’s Minister of State of the ruling conservative New Democracy party, Makis Voridis, on Monday admitted that he had been put under surveillance through the illegal spyware Predator.

Voridis, speaking on the Greek private TV channel ANT1, said the Hellenic Data Protection Authority had informed him that, after it investigated, it emerged that he had been put under surveillance by Predator.

The media outlet Documento had revealed that the data authority had informed three members of PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ government – among them Voridis – that they were put under surveillance by Predator, along with two other persons.

“I received a letter from the Hellenic Data Protection Authority,” said Voridis. Answering the journalists’ question about whether he would take legal action, he said: “I have nothing to do.”

“A lawsuit would only make things even more complicated in the case file. I have nothing to contribute to this,” he said.

The wiretapping scandal, which has occupied the Greek media since the spring of 2022, concerns the use of Predator by the Greek secret services, EYP, to monitor or attempt to monitor journalists, politicians, and other public figures.

The Brussels edition of Politico in a Monday report states that a proposal by the president of the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, ADAE, Christos Rammos, to fine the EYP 100,00 euros for concealing critical information in the wiretapping case was blocked.

According to the Politico report, shortly before midnight on September 28, the government Gazette published the appointment of new members of the ADAE. According to the media, this was done to prevent its Board of Directors from imposing a fine of 100,000 euros on the EYP.

BIRN contacted the office of the government spokesperson, Pavlos Marinakis. It insisted that the procedure was in accordance with Greek law: “The term of office of the members of ADAE had expired a year ago, and the procedure to replace the members was carried out as stipulated by the constitution”.