It is practically impossible to hide anything – the only question is how persistent we are, and we are persistent. All we can do is keep asking questions, present the facts that someone is trying to conceal, and refuse to give up until we find them, however long it takes, said Senka Vlatković-Odavić, journalist and editor at Insajder Television in Serbia, and Predrag Tomović, journalist at TV Vijesti in Montenegro, who previously worked for many years at Radio Free Europe and Al Jazeera Balkans. In CCE’s PROUDCAST, they spoke with Željka Zvicer, Programme Associate, about what it means to be a professional journalist today, how much investigative journalism can change society, and the price that comes with doing this work.
Vlatković-Odavić remembers her first day at work as a moment that shaped her both as a journalist and as a person – it was the day Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić was assassinated. “I had to learn in real time that you have to remain composed when practically no one around you is. News is not what you published first, but what actually happened,” she says. “You do not want an exclusive. You want the news,” she advises younger colleagues.
As an example of an investigation that produced a concrete result, Tomović cites the case of a judge who, during the selection process for the Central Election Commission, denied ever having financed a political party. “We verified that he was not telling the truth. We published the story, the court did not respond, but we approached the Judicial Council and requested a review of his ethical responsibility – he subsequently resigned. For me, that is a professional victory and proof that this work has meaning,” he says.
Vlatković-Odavić points to an Insajder investigation into the purchase of old factories for the construction of residential buildings and the generation of substantial profits, with no benefit to the state, as an example of the real power of investigative journalism. “The authorities denied everything, even though the findings were based exclusively on documents. Several months later, seemingly out of nowhere, they amended the law, admitted that this was indeed the case and began charging for land conversion. At that point, I felt that journalism could literally move a mountain,” she recalls.
Speaking about the price of this kind of journalism, Vlatković-Odavić stresses that personal safety is most at risk. “We should not romanticise journalistic courage, because our families also come under serious pressure. We produced a series on the links between football supporter groups, the state and organised crime, which seriously endangered the safety of my editor, Brankica Stanković. Still, we forced both the authorities and the public to deal with the issue,” she says, describing her own persistence through the image of Sisyphus: “I have asked myself a hundred times whether I am just a bug on Sisyphus’s rock.”
Tomović adds that pressure on his newsroom has continued for years, regardless of who is in power. “I work for a newsroom that has for years been targeted by different structures because of the way it covers organised crime and corruption. What the other side, it seems to me, does not understand is how attached a journalist becomes to a story once they sink their teeth into it – and some have paid for that with their lives,” he says.
Tomović highlights examples from Montenegro in which institutions reacted almost simultaneously with the publication of journalistic stories – from the initiation of proceedings before the Judicial Council to a case opened by the Special State Prosecutor’s Office (SDT) against the president of a municipality for abuse of office. “Ten or fifteen years ago, even the most basic information about a public official’s salary was treated as confidential. There are still some impregnable fortresses today, but there are fewer of them,” Tomović says.
Vlatković-Odavić describes the opposite trend in Serbia. “Here, by contrast, the doors are slowly closing – the land-conversion law we mentioned earlier was recently abolished, and the current Prime Minister has not held a single press conference,” she says, adding that the trivialisation of issues through propaganda also contributes to this. “However many years it takes, I will never give up on that story, just as I will never give up on the search for those responsible for the murder of our colleague Slavko Ćuruvija,” she says.
“Persistence and insistence on these issues are our strongest weapon – never giving up on the demand that all the facts be established. If the courts will not establish them, we will find a way to publish them,” Tomović adds, stressing that persistence is precisely journalism’s strongest weapon. He sees the main difference between large regional newsrooms such as RFE/RL or AJB and local media in terms of resources. “The talent is there, but a local newsroom does not have a team that can spend months, even years, working solely on an investigation,” he explains.
As an example of the limits of ethical reporting in tragic circumstances, Vlatković-Odavić cites coverage of the mass killing at Vladislav Ribnikar Primary School in Belgrade. “On the very first evening, I said in my own programme that the way some journalists behaved was almost unacceptable. Cameras were chasing the people in deepest grief, asking them for statements before anyone even knew what had happened. A journalist’s job in such moments is to ask questions of those who could have prevented the tragedy, not to broadcast the pain of those most affected,” she says.
Asked what they would say to younger colleagues who are finding it increasingly difficult to remain in the profession, Tomović emphasises integrity and a willingness to make sacrifices. “The first thing they have to accept is sacrifice, and that the beginning will not be easy. But in the end, it is worth it,” he says. Vlatković-Odavić believes they should preserve the child within themselves and never stop asking “why”. “Information is what we know. We can assume all sorts of things, but we also have to prove them. And they should never simply accept everything, because there is no need to. But I think this generation coming up now does not just accept things.”
The full episode is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0ZmTOMC4c
This PROUDCAST was jointly produced by CCE and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).
Maja Marinović, Programme Associate