Mediacentar Sarajevo Awarded the 2006 Integrity Awards

On the occasion of the International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December 2006, Transparency International BiH (TI BiH) awarded the annual BiH Integrity Awards for the third time. At the ceremony to mark both this significant date and six years of TI BiH’s work, the award was handed out to Medijacentar, Sarajevo by Mr Boris Divjak, Chairman of the TI BiH Board of Directors and Member of the TI International Board of Directors. The ceremony to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day, attended by a large number of guests, was held in the hotel Holiday Inn in Sarajevo.

Serious research work calls for an extraordinary professional effort aimed at unearthing and analysing relevant information. In closed societies such as BiH, with limited availability of publicly important information, investigative journalists are faced with much bigger obstacles in their day-to-day work. It is for this reason that TI BiH for the first time awarded the Integrity Awards to an institution – the organisation that has contributed greatly to the advancement and development of journalism by establishing an on-line data archive and training a large number of journalists from BiH and South-East Europe.

“By its definition, investigative journalism deals with problems of paramount public interest and very often with cases of organised crime and political corruption. The unearthing and disclosure of such cases is the most significant contribution that the media can make to society today. The act of presenting the Integrity Awards is a token of public gratitude and appreciation to the most outstanding individuals and organisations in this field and added incentive to their independent and professional investigative journalism, which TI BiH has been standing for ever since it was established,” said Mr Boris Divjak, Chairman of the TI BiH Board of Directors and Member of the TI International Board of Directors.

Marking in parallel the sixth anniversary of its work, TI BiH pledged itself to intensify the anti-corruption activities. “Consistent application of anti-corruption measures in all segments of society as well as provision of legal advice to citizens, victims of corruption, have been and will remain our mission in BiH,” concluded Divjak. Expressing gratitude on behalf of Mediacentar, Sarajevo, Mr Saša Leković, Training manager, underlined that investigative journalism, whose work will be monitored and improved on a daily basis by this institution, plays a special role in creating preconditions for such social standards. “Our goal is to create high-quality investigative journalist and equip them with the indispensable tools for their very important social task. Mediacentar will continue to be active in the country and the region in 2007,” said Mr Leković.