Building multi-ethnic media
8 March 2002 made radio history in Bujanovac, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was the first time a radio show in the southern Serbia town was jointly hosted by a Serbian and Albanian journalists and produced and broadcast in a language other than Serbian.
Doing it differently
This year, municipal Radio Bujanovac decided to celebrate women's day differently. A lively two-hour programme focused on the life and role of women in the area, featuring music and quizzes in all the three local community languages - Serbian, Albanian and Roma.
This is a sharp contrast to early 2001, when the main items on Radio Bujanovac were reports on clashes between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas broadcast in Serbian and produced by Serbian journalists.
"It is great," said Srdjan Djurdjevic, monitor from the Media Department of the OSCE Mission to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. "We have Serbian, Albanian and Roma journalists working side by side for the first time."
The programme was well-received among the staff of the radio station and in the community in general. "It seemed that hearing a radio show in Albanian, Serbian and Roma was nothing out of the ordinary, and that is a very good thing," said another OSCE media monitor, Iljasa Musliu.
Promoting a new kind of journalism
The ground-breaking show was produced by 11 Serbian, Albanian and Roma students from the OSCE-run media training programme for southern Serbia and the staff of Radio Bujanovac, and was the first step towards establishing regular multi-lingual programming on the station.
"The goal is a true local public radio providing objective information to all citizens - Serbs, Albanians and Roma - in their own language," said Srdjan Djurdjevic. In the case of Radio Bujanovac, an Albanian-language news desk is to be established and multi-language broadcasts are to become a standard part of the programme.
But this requires qualified journalists to staff the new services. In order to meet this demand, the OSCE established in April 2001 a special programme aimed at training young Serbs, Albanians and Roma in journalism and getting them to work together. Now numbering 14 students, the programme is making an impact.
Natasa Savic and Dhurata Azemi - two students of the course, said they thoroughly enjoyed the experience of learning together and then working together on producing the show.
This was also their first chance to actually work at the radio station where they could be working in the future.
Part of a wider effort
The media assistance programme, similarly to the multi-ethnic police training programme run by the OSCE, was established to help overcome the ethnic divide in southern Serbia, the scene of inter-ethnic fighting less than a year ago.
Apart from training future journalists like Natasa and Dhurata, the programme also includes training for those already working in local radio and newspapers, media monitoring, assistance to media in reforming their programmes and editorial policy, technical assistance and mediation.
"The idea is to use the media to build confidence and trust, and to bridge the divide by providing objective information," said Iljasa Musliu.
In Bujanovac, the airwaves are different already.