Becici, Montenegro – Fifteen journalists from EBU Members in the Western Balkans have completed a successful and innovative seminar on investigative journalism mounted by the EBU Partnership Programme.

The workshop was part of an EU-funded action plan to strengthen public service media in the Balkan EU accession countries: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. (HRT, the public broadcaster of Croatia - which joined the EU last year – also took part.)

In a gesture of solidarity from other EBU Members, the trainers included Nils Hanson, editor-in-chief of investigative programming at Sweden’s SVT, and Isabel Shayani of WDR (Germany). Stories developed during the five-day seminar (26-30 May) are expected to be broadcast later this year.

Designed in cooperation with the Eurovision ACADEMY and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), the seminar was preceded by extensive preliminary work including reading materials and individual mentoring on story proposals discussed with the journalists’ respective editors.

For largely historic reasons, investigative journalism is rarely conducted by the former state broadcasters of the Balkans. “Our goal is to encourage and enable our Members in this region to develop such programming,” says senior project manager Radka Betcheva. “Investigative programmes bring great viewership and increase the trust of audiences.”

A continuous mentoring process should help the journalists tackle challenges and dilemmas likely to arise throughout the process of preparing an investigative story, Ms Betcheva says.

Apart from Mr Hanson and Ms Shayani, speakers at the workshop included Brankica Stankovic, a  prominent investigative journalist for the Serbian channel B92 and her colleagues Miodrag Cvorovic and Mirjana Jevtovic, Markus Lindemann of the German consultancy AutorenWerk, Miranda Patrucic of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Programme, and Gordana Igric from BIRN. Ms Stankovic is under police protection 24 hours a day.

The entire seminar was moderated by former EBU Vice-President Boris Bergant of RTVSLO (Slovenia), who said he had never seen such commitment from a workshop’s participants.

For their part, the participants themselves were rich in praise and appreciation.

“It covered all themes, and there was a great balance of theory and practical knowledge,” said Milijana Jeftenic of RTV Serbia.

“Great!” said Drazen Majic of HRT. “Lots of practices and participation of the journalists!”

Amina Ahmetovic of BHRT, Bosnia-Herzegovina described the group exercises as excellent. “So thank you!”