Eurasia Press & News
“A few weeks before the 2024 election campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina started, my phone rang – it was a top-ranking person in the city administration and the ruling party. This person had never called me before nor have they since,” recounted Aleksandar Drakulic, the owner of a local news portal and reporter in the city of Prijedor, in Bosnia and Hercegovina’s Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska.
“He asked me to meet a person to discuss a business deal. It was a high-level politician whom I usually cooperate with when I offer the space and price list for advertising to all political subjects a month before the election campaign starts,” Drakulic said.
“This time, it was quite mysterious compared to all previous elections. As I entered the bar at the pre-arranged time, I saw the person I was meant to meet sitting with someone else whom I recognised as another news portal owner. I assumed he was there over the same matter as I was,” he said.
It transpired that this politician of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), the Serb nationalist party which has governed Republika Srpska since 2006, offered the owners of these local news portals – often one or two-person outfits that aggregate content and publish content direct from the parties – ten times more money than the usual price for covering the party’s activities during the election campaign for the October 2024 local elections, but under conditions that Drakulic had never encountered before.
“They insisted that I couldn’t publish a single word by any of the opposition parties or their candidates,” he recalled.
Drakulic turned down the offer, unlike another news portal owner whom BIRN spoke to on condition of anonymity. This portal owner subsequently attended a second meeting at the political party’s offices.
“There were four of us – three local portal owners and a person from the public service broadcaster Radio Televizija Republike Srpske. We waited together in one room and then entered another room one by one. On their side there were two people, both highly placed at the local and entity level,” the local news portal owner related to BIRN.
The portal owner confirmed that the offered amount was several times higher than usual for carrying party content during election campaigns.
“I published whatever the SNSD’s local branch sent. However, I had to wait for payment for months. I asked for my money every now and then. They directed me from one person to the next. The communication was exhausting. In the end, I called and texted a guy in [the Republika Srpska capital of] Banja Luka to whom they referred me. I told him I was coming tomorrow to his workplace, an entity-level public institution. He texted me back to meet at a gas station instead,” the local portal owner said.
“It turned out that they paid me two times less than was agreed,” he added.
This anecdotal evidence about how the local media is treated by the ruling parties is backed by an investigation from Mediacentar Sarajevo, which supports the development of independent and professional journalism in Bosnia. The NGO’s report on how the media covered last year’s local elections in Bosnia – which was based on monitoring and analysing 40 media outlets (24 online, 10 radio and six TV outlets) in eight local communities across Republika Srpska, including Prijedor – indicated a huge dominance of the ruling SNSD party over all the other 295 political subjects that participated in the elections, both in terms of coverage and mentions.
“In the largest number of cases, the main actors belong to the SNSD… All other political parties are far below this political party,” the investigation found.
For instance, SNSD’s share in the online media space was 28.6 per cent, while the next, the Serb Democratic Party of Bosnia (SDS), had three and a half times less at 8.5 per cent. The same went for TV and radio: the main actors belonged to the SNSD in 80 cases, while the next was the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia at 16.0 per cent.
“This dominance may indicate a proactive political strategy of the SNSD, which resulted in a greater media presence compared to other political parties,” the report said.
Out of the 22 political subjects registered for the 2024 local elections in Prijedor, these news portals mentioned only six. Only one piece of content featured an opposition party.
If voters had relied solely on Prijedor’s four main news portals to stay informed on the October 2024 local elections, they would never have learned there was even another candidate standing for mayor besides the current one, the SNSD’s Slobodan Javor. No one mentioned Maja Dragojevic Stojic of the opposition SDS, who eventually won 36 per cent of the vote compared with Javor’s 64 per cent.
According Mediacentar Sarajevo, local media often show a certain degree of political bias, especially to the benefit of the parties that dominate the local political scene. “The contents of local media mostly remain outside the reach of regulatory bodies, self-regulatory mechanisms and watchdog media platforms, which results in the absence of answers to blatant examples of violations of professional standards,” the media NGO wrote.
Nurturing the habit of not asking difficult questions
Besides paying the media to avoid covering opposition parties and any topics that don’t favour the ruling parties, there are several other ways ruling parties can punish the media that are not under their control.
The most obvious one is to simply not answer requests for information from journalists. Mladen Karan, a Prijedor-based correspondent for BN, a popular TV station which has been a thorn in the side of the ruling SNSD for many years, told BIRN that this happens when he asks for anything that could be potentially compromising to the party.
“I usually do it through an official form via the city administration website, created for journalists only. For instance, I recently asked about one factory, one kindergarten and one public garage. All three projects were started in 2022, yet there is still no completion in sight for any of them. Although many times [SNSD] promised and many deadlines past, I have never received a word back,” he said.
Another way of marginalising the independent media is via selective invitations. “There are numerous examples of events organised by the local administration that only afterwards do we see that they took place,” Karan explained. “We see that in fact some media were invited to cover the event, because there are some mics in the shot, and the local administration has no problem with such a custom since they publish the official pictures with these few mics visible.”
“The selection is somehow always based on the criterion of not asking unpleasant questions,” he added.
Another way of limiting coverage by unfriendly media is to simply erase these outlets from the mailing lists that most institutions use to promote their activities, to organise press conferences and to send out press releases.
“One of my colleagues and I were removed from the mailing list of the local museum. I suspect that the museum director didn’t like us after we checked on whether it was true that she and her family had moved to another country while she kept her position at the museum and worked remotely. Our story led to her resignation,” Drakulic explained. “Once a new director was appointed, she called us to ask us for our emails so she could put them back on the media mailing list.”
Another unfair practice is providing the information to journalists in an inappropriate form. “Very often I receive the answer in a written form, even though I had asked for someone to stand in front of the camera since I work for TV,” Karan told BIRN.
There are even examples where the authorities don’t even try to hide their selective approach. During last winter, the Prijedor city heating company’s bank account was blocked three times over unpaid debts to its suppliers. On February 6, the mayor’s office sent out a press release about the issue, including a photo of him giving a statement in his press briefing room. Yet only two mics were visible in front of him, meaning only those two media were present at the briefing and had a chance to ask questions. Other TV stations were further affected, since they could only rely on written content.
Stonewalling
Occasionally, journalists do get a chance to interrogate officials publicly about why they won’t answer requests for information. This usually happens after the officials have repeatedly refused to answer questions previously put to them, causing awkward moments in front of the cameras, mics, officials and other guests.
Sometimes officials will deliberately undermine the work of independent journalists by providing the information to all the media even though the questions were originally requested by only one or two. Other times the officials also insist on requiring formal reasons for having to answer to make it harder, slower and more exhausting for journalists, presumably in the hope that they will give up trying to report the topic in hand.
A vivid example of all three types of this behaviour is displayed by Prijedor’s acting regional hospital director, Miroslav Bijelic, and his interactions with BN TV and its local correspondent, Mladen Karan.
Below is a transcript of part of the press conference held on July 1, 2024 with Republika Srpska Health Minister Alen Seranic and Prijedor Mayor Javor during their visit to the local hospital, whose reconstruction has been promised by the SNSD since 2020 but is still pending. The huge public interest in Prijedor’s hospital is not only centred on the long-awaited reconstruction, but also on the frequent leaks during heavy rain and about the poor condition of the facilities, in particular the oncology department.
Journalist: “Mr Bijelic, this is Mladen Karan, BN TV. On June 19, we sent you questions related to hospital reconstruction. Up until today we didn’t get the answers. So, is there any reason why?”
Bijelic: “There is not any reason. As all the other media, you could get a joint interview. The other media were present.”
Journalist: “You didn’t invite us.”
Bijelic: “At the same time as you were called, the others were called too. Now, I don’t know…”
Below is another transcript of an exchange between the same individuals during a press conference held on December 27, 2024 on Prijedor’s hospital workers and union striking over dissatisfaction with pay and conditions.
Journalist: “Why have you never answered the questions sent to you by BN TV? Are you afraid of something?”
Bijelic: “No, I’m not afraid of anything at all. I always answer press enquiries. You can invite me for an interview. I will always respond to any of your questions and answer you in written form, because I believe that the written method of communication in the sense of a statement that will be delivered to all media is the best way for you and me to protect ourselves from some misinterpretations…”
Journalist: “So, you’re sure you’ve answered us?”
Bijelic: “Absolutely. You will receive written answers to all the questions you ask, which are in accordance with journalistic ethics and what I am allowed to submit in terms of the information I can provide.”
Journalist: “Over the last two or three months, you have never answered one question.”
Bijelić: “I will answer…”
Journalist: “You even asked us to send you a certified and signed request?”
Bijelic: “Which, I think, is quite logical that certified and signed documentation is sent. You did not send a signed and certified one, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the questions should be such that I can answer them. And not that I am asked to give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to your specific suggestion, which I cannot.”
Speaking to BIRN, Karan pointed out that the usual practice is to send a simple email to someone who has the authority, knowledge and even duty to answer relevant questions from journalists. Karan said that he never faced anyone before who had requested such highly formal correspondence, suspecting that this was another official method designed to make journalists’ work more difficult.
“Bijelic asks for questions to be sent with a memorandum, stamp and signature. I forwarded his request to my headquarters. They sent back what he had asked for and I forwarded this to the hospital’s email address. After some time, I called to check why there still had been no answer. They told me that they need hard copies, not emails or scans. So, we did it like it used to be done in the pre-digital era. Again, no word back from hospital,” Karan recounted.
“So, what Bijelic said to journalists in December does not match with my experience. We did whatever he asked for and he still never answered,” Karan said.
In Karan’s experience, the hospital’s management as well as city administration have also been guilty of using the friendly press to pre-empt his stories in order to put the issue in a more positive light.
“It happened to me twice. The first time it was about this hospital reconstruction. As I said, I sent the questions on June 19; three days later RTRS published a very optimistic story about exactly that topic in its main news… Another example was last October when I sent an inquiry to the local administration about the public parking price increase. A few days later, RTRS hosted the parking service chief who was supposed to be my interviewee, who talked about the new prices for more than seven minutes. I never got the answers,” Karan said.
Consistent with the criticism of SNSD’s methods towards the media outlined here, neither Bijelic nor Javor answered BIRN’s questions sent to their official email addresses about their alleged selective approach towards the media, including favouring media that are perceived by the public to be under government control and not responding to the media that are perceived by the public to be independent.
A wider problem
These practices are not confined to Prijedor, but are widely regarded as commonplace elsewhere in Republika Srpska.
Banja Luka-based journalist Sinisa Vukelic runs one of the media outlets, Capital.ba, that has been frequently targeted by the SNSD authorities in similar ways that other media not under the control of the party have been.
“Over the years, pressuring, threats, attempts at bribery, marking out journalists, denial of information, intimidation, violence, insults, rejecting of financial aid from public funds, and bans on advertising in media that question the work of the authorities have become harder and more and more repressive, systematic and organised,” Vukelic told BIRN.
“We recall SNSD’s first term in office from 1998 to 2000 when the government sessions were open to the public. Today, as we enter their 20th year in power, we cannot even obtain the decisions that they have made, not even upon FOI requests,” Vukelic said.
He cites three ways of how those in power have acted towards the independent media.
Firstly, there is the labelling of journalists for independent outlets as ‘enemies of the state’ who are set on destroying Republika Srpska. “SNSD leader Milorad Dodik, when he was Republika Srpska president, stated that the people must judge those journalists. He was practically calling for lynchings,” Vukelic said.
Secondly, the Republika Srpska government re-criminalised defamation two years ago and the National Assembly on February 27 adopted the Law on the Special Registry and Transparency of the Work of Nonprofit Organizations, which requires foreign-funded groups to register with the Justice Ministry as “foreign agents” and comply with strict financial oversight and reporting rules.
“The day after, tax inspectors entered our newsroom. Officially, this was a regular check-up; unofficially, a paper was shown to me showing that the Republika Srpska’s Ministry of Interior had provided the tax authorities with a list of media to inspect,” Vukelis said.
Thirdly, Dodik announced during the government session on September 11 that Republika Srpska needs to establish a department to fight what the government calls “fake news”.
“Portal Capital.ba reported a few months ago that the government of Republika Srpska bought software from the Chinese, worth about 60 million marks [30 million euros], which can be used to block the internet; that is, to block undesirable news about the government,” he said.
Vukelic confirmed that he also experienced a similar practice used in Prijedor whereby his FOI requests to institutions controlled by SNSD suddenly resulted in information being provided to media under the party’s influence.
“To prevent our own story being destroyed in that way, we overcame it by giving them a deadline and then writing in the story that we would publish their response once we received it,” Vukelic explained.
“In terms of not receiving the answers within the deadlines set by FOI laws, we recently started to sue public institutions. There have been some 30-40 lawsuits against them over the last two months, and we already have several judgements in our favour,” he added.
