Press in Bosnia “Partly Free”

Freedom House has recently published a report on press freedom in 2008 which lists Bosnia-Herzegovina in the group of countries with “partly free” press.

Here is an excerpt from the text on Bosnia-Herzegovina:

“Although attacks are fairly uncommon, journalists throughout BiH remain subject to political pressure and threats of violence, including one uttered in October 2007 by the Serb human rights ombudsman. There is also concern over the influence of organized crime on the media. Meanwhile, the current RS prime minister, Milorad Dodik, has been accused of tightening control over the Bosnian Serb media. His government replaced the leadership of the official SRNA news agency and the semiofficial daily Glas Srpske in 2006, and the opposition has alleged that the RS public broadcaster, RTRS, shows a progovernment bias. In January 2007, the RS government initiated a boycott of BHT-1, the BiH public television station, over perceived disrespect for the RS and Bosnian Serb leaders. RS officials refused to give interviews or statements to BHT-1, and the station’s reporters were barred from RS press conferences. The boycott was lifted at the end of the month, after the general director of BHT-1 was replaced.”

There is a lot in this paragraph to be alarmed by, but I can’t help but going back to the absurdity of the human rights ombudsman threatening a journalist in 2007. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything on the subject on the web – if any of you readers know something, please share a link.

The report reminded me of an article at Balkan Insight about an attack on the journalist Slobodan Vasković for trying to film a Serb Orthodox Church in Trebinje for the popular political magazine “60 Minutes”. I remember it mostly because of the online game developed by the activist group Protest. In this game, you can join in on the authorities’ assaults on journalists, “the most popular game in our country”.

In general, Freedom House finds that press freedom continues to decline on a global scale for the seventh year. In terms of population, the survey found that only 18 percent of the world’s inhabitants live in countries that enjoy a Free press, while 40 percent have a Partly Free press and 42 percent have a Not Free press.

You can see the Map of Press Freedom here. Click on the map to choose a region or country or use the drop-down menu.