Fund allocation to the media in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton without clear criteria.

foto: Pixabay / Ilustracija

Translation: Tijana Dmitrović

Since last week, the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been witnessing a showdown between the press releases of the Government of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (HNK) and journalists after certain media outlets in Herzegovina, primarily the Istina.media portal, reported on the non-transparent allocation of funds to the media from the budget of this government.

It all started after Istina.media reported last Monday which media outlets in the HNK would receive funds, including, as stated in the publication of this portal, local-level media outlets edited from the mayor's office. It was also pointed out that the list does not include the most widely read media outlets in Herzegovina that criticize the government.

Two days after Istina.media published the information, the HNK government called it untrue and sensationalist and issued a denial.

The Board of Directors of the Association of BH Journalists reacted to the announcement by the HNK Government. In the announcement, they expressed support for the Istina.media portal and other media outlets based in HNK for, as stated, making information about the non-transparent allocation of funds to the media in this canton public.

The Association of BH Journalists condemned the attempts of the HNK Government to, as reported, exert political pressure on media outlets that published critical reviews of the allocation of funds to selected media outlets, declaring them unprofessional and manipulative and accusing them of “breaking up the ruling coalition in the HNK.”

The HNK Government then reacted again, stating that the association was “protecting defamatory and sensationalist journalism” in response to the BH Journalists' announcement.

“With a brutal public attack on the dignity and reputation of the HNK Government, the Association of BH Journalists has only tarnished its name and honour, degrading the dignity of the profession that it should be fiercely protecting, especially in today's times when the criteria for calling an individual a journalist or a portal a media outlet have entered worryingly murky waters," the HNK Government's statement from last Friday stated, among other things.

Following this statement, BH Journalists rejected the political manipulations and untruths of the HNK Government, as they said.

“The Board of Directors of BH Journalists rejects any kind of political manipulation of the content of the statement and the intention of BH Journalists to draw public attention to the fact that the Government of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (HNK) did not respect the principles of transparency, clear criteria and media scoring when awarding media grants in this canton,” BH Journalists announced the day after the HNK Government's statement.

It was also said that this is not the first time the mentioned government “tries to wrap up its own non-transparency in the mistakes of others or to plant them in certain media and BH Journalists.”

They recalled that over the past two decades, BH Journalists have repeatedly warned about, as they said, “strange criteria for allocating funds to media in the HNK,” which, as it is added, will continue to do so in the future, given that, as stated, neither the HNK nor any other canton or entity, nor state authorities, “respect the criteria for transparent media financing, but rather try to hide their decisions as deeply as possible from the public.”

According to the Bljesak journalist Berislav Jurič, this kind of communication between the HNK Government and the public does not differ too much from the communication of other levels of government and other officials.

“The political culture, or rather non-culture in BiH, is widespread in all offices that look down on the public and that for decades have not understood or accepted their responsibility towards the public that pays them,” says Jurič.

Unclear process of allocating funds to the media by the HNK Government

Journalists from Herzegovina believe that the HNK Government has been allocating money in an incomprehensible way for years.

According to the last census, the HNK Government allocated BAM 220,000 to 29 media outlets. Among others, BPZ, the portal of the Association of First Volunteers of the HVO of the Homeland War 91-95, Brotnjo.info, Caportal, Crkva na kamene, Djaka City, Croatian media service, and Neum Online were on the government's list, receiving BAM 3,000 each. Radio Konjic received BAM 25,000, while RTV Jablanica received BAM 14,000.

Jurič says that in HNK the call for the allocation of funds is not publicly announced, the criteria are unclear, and the money is given to media outlets with no ownership or funding information in their legal sections.

He believes that every government, including the HNK Government, wants to have silent media in the territory they rule.

He recalled that Bljesak received funding from the HNK Government in 2016, but that this media outlet publicly renounced it in favour of humanitarian organizations, explaining that there are those who need help more and that the process must be more transparent.

“After that, we were never on the list again, and I think shouldn't even be on such strangely composed lists of 'winners',” Jurič pointed out.

He also says that it is clear that the media need help, especially small local outlets, but that the conditions and reasons must be clearer.

“Money should be allocated with clear reasons, and they must never include buying silence. And I think that is the main motive in this case. Particularly interesting is the sentence from the Government's press release, in which it is stated that today 'the criteria for calling an individual a journalist or a portal a media outlet have gone into worryingly murky waters'. It's strange because the money was allocated to some of those who operate in murky waters,” Jurič told Media.ba.

Istina.media editor Kristina Spajić-Perić also says that the process of allocating funds to media outlets in HNK is completely non-transparent and has been for years. This year, she added, the process has worsened, given that, as she said, Sarajevo-based media outlets have also received funds.

“All of this shows that the coalition chose and lobbied who would receive support and who would not,” Spajić-Perić said.   

She also believes that the HNK Government tried to obscure this process of allocating funds to media in HNK by waging a private war with the Istina.media portal, of which she is the editor.

She said that Istina.media published a partial list of media working in the Croatian and Serbian languages ​​that received help after the HNK Government did not comply with requests from independent media to provide a list of media beneficiaries of budget funds. As Spajić-Perić added, when they published the list, the HNK Government accused this media outlet of lying and then published the entire list of media that received the support of the HNK Government.

“From that list, it is clear that every media outlet and every amount on our and the government's list is identical when it comes to media that publish in Croatian and one in Serbian,” said Spajić-Perić.

The Istina.media list included 23 media outlets, while the official government list listed 29, including Radio Konjic and RTV Jablanica, which were not listed on Istina.media.

Spajić-Perić says that they were accused of deliberately not publishing the list of media outlets that publish in the Bosnian language in order to shake up the coalition in HNK.

“This is especially crazy considering that they could have published the entire list at the end of 2024 and protected the coalition, not only after being provoked by our article,” she said. 

She noted that earlier, due to the same issue of not responding to inquiries and hiding lists, she reported to the Institution of the Ombudsman the former government in HNK and the president of that government, Nevenko Herceg, and that journalists always received the list of winners through unofficial channels, since they could not reach them officially. 

When it comes to the process of awarding funds, Spajić-Perić says that the fact that the most widely read portals in HNK did not receive assistance, and that “some local portals edited by the party youth” are on the list, speaks volumes.

The editor-in-chief of Hercegovina.info, Nikola Bačić, says that the most money was received by media outlet run by the person who hosted HDZ's pre-election podcast. It is Radio Mostarska Panorama, edited by Ana-Marija Dedić. Besides Mostar Panorama, which received BAM 40,000, as Bačić added, Večernji.ba and Radio Gradska Mreža also received money from the HNK Government. Radio Gradska Mreža and Mostarski.ba are media under the mantle of the Mostar Culture Centre, which means that part of the money also goes to the Mostarski.ba portal.

Bačić points out that the list of media that received funds also includes Vijesti.ba, whose headquarters and editorial office are located in Sarajevo.

“Taking all this into account, it is clear that things are not as they should be if it is important for the authorities to encourage quality and pluralism in the media. If there were objective criteria, whatever they might be, by which registered media would be scored after a public tender, it would be easier for everyone. As an independent and critical media outlet, we would not apply at all, if that worries them,” Bačić stressed.

Bačić said that on 23 January 2025, they sent an official request to the Information Office of the HNK Government asking for information about several budget items, including the criteria and lists of winners. Despite the detailed inquiry from this media with the stated budget amounts, Bačić relays the response from the HNK Government in which it can be seen that they did not receive a concrete answer to the inquiry. Bačić believes that this speaks of the extremely non-transparent behaviour of the Government and how they spend taxpayers' money. He further pointed out that the funding distribution to the media is also non-transparent.

Quoting the Government's statement, which claims that “the media that received the support of the Government were selected following the lists that the Government received from the mayors, i.e. mayors of cities and municipalities in the Canton, in accordance with their objective assessments of the importance of the activities of those media houses for their local self-government unit and its development,” Bačić says he wonders what the city and municipal mayors' objective assessments are.

According to him, this opens up space for abuses and rewarding politically favourable media – which, he added, is exactly what happened.

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