Kosovo’s Journalists Meet to Address Interethnic Cooperation

With the relations between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians a key issue underlining international discussion on Kosovo’s future status, the Kosovo Media Assistance Program (KMAP) staged the second of its interethnic dialogues for media professionals. Conducted by Dr. Sheila Ramsey of KMAP sub-contractor EnCompass, the dialogues were meant to encourage Kosovar journalists of different ethnic backgrounds, mainly Albanian and Serbian, to talk about ways in which they can work together. KMAP, funded by USAID and implemented by IREX, focuses on this sensitive topic as part of its goal to better inform the public through improvements in the quality of journalism; an issue especially important now that the deadline for a status decision has passed with still no compromise reached on the status issue.

The first dialogue, in May 2007, brought together 16 participants (eight Albanians, five Serbs, two Bosniaks, and one Roma) and received high approval ratings that reflected the already relatively strong professional working relationships between journalists of different ethnicities in Kosovo, as well as their willingness to further strengthen the ties. Zarko Joksimovich, president of the (Serb) Association of Journalists of Kosovo and Metohija, said that journalists were second only to organized crime in their willingness to work across ethnic divisions.

This second dialogue on November 2 focused on younger journalists and broadcasters (seven Albanians and seven Serbs), few of whom were able to speak each others’ language. The journalists agreed on a number of ways to collaborate in the future and identified obstacles and how they might overcome them. As Milan Joksimovic of Link Productions put it, “It is not so much whether you speak in Serbian or Albanian. It is how you use the language that counts, whether it brings you closer together or splits you apart. The important thing is not to use hate speech.”  In particular the young journalists worked out ways in which they might share sources from different ethnic groups, to whom they might not normally have access, and how they might offer different perspectives to each others’ work.