Fear of talking about working conditions prevails among journalists in Kosovo, region

This consisting has emerged from research conducted with journalists from five countries in the region, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Do journalists have adequate freedom to deal with their work on the editorials they work on?, has the question been the focus of monthly research, titled “Dhuna: Stories from Redaksia”, where journalists' evidence of the pressures they face in their daily work in editorials is gathered.

Una Hajdari during the research launch, from Kosovo, said that often to come by the time a scripture is published, the journalist must fight within the editorials to get the subject right.

She mentioned several conclusions that followed the realisation of these interviews with journalists about their work inside the editorials.

My “findings in Kosovo, which have been and to us, are very well known, is that very rarely journalists, except in public television and radio, work on contracts where their rights are defined. The journalist when he comes to work in Kosovo, he does not expect him to negotiate with his employer or employers to seek protection of his rights or the conditions within which he enters into working relations. Journalists see themselves here from other employees, someone who comes to work at the bank, the institution, or maybe even some private company, clearly asks for his work rights, until journalists rarely have this option”, said Hajdari, KsP reports.

According to her, in Kosovo there is no initiative for union organisation, where they are collectively organised for protection of their rights.

Zarka Radoja journalist in Serbia has presented the findings in the research he conducted there.

“We have talked to about a hundred journalists in all [the region's] states, and the main impression is that journalists are afraid to talk about the difficulties they work on. That's why most of our evidence is anonymous. That is the best outcome for us. So when we talk about Serbia, even though the situation in Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro is very similar, our colleagues are discriminated against, have problems with censorship and open pressure, which ultimately leads to self-sension, which is the greatest concern”, Radoja stressed.

As for the media situation in Serbia in general, Radoja said that many international organisations already have a conclusion regarding media freedom and the media situation in Serbia, where RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has already ranked Serbia for 10 countries below for last year regarding media freedom in Serbia,

Journalist Biljana Sekulovska- Iva from Macedonia, says fear has been their most surprising result in this research.

So the most surprising result of our research is fear. Journalists are afraid of everything, but mostly from their editors. They fear that their editors will be humiliated, degraded, or tortured. They already have miserable salaries, but they still fear that they will be fired, that they cannot find another job and that they will end up on the street, that they will be put on the blacklist by other journalists and other media”, Sekulovska-Iva said.

She says editors are afraid of their owners as they can be fired from their jobs as journalists and may lose their comfort, their benefits, their financial situation, but also their power.

While the owners, according to her, are always afraid of the ruling party -- politicians, the government, the prime minister -- because they may be put under some investigation into crime, other corruption.

Project <x0) Stories from Redaksia” are supported by the European Union and is part of the “Support of Media Freedom and Freedom of Speech” programme, implemented by the Association of Journalists of Croatia as part of the “regional platform for the lack of media freedom and safety of journalists in the Western Balkans”.