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The background of Life in Kosovo

30 November 2010  

Since its first broadcast on September 2005, Life in Kosovo has been the most watched current affairs show in Kosovo.

To begin with, the show consisted of a one-hour debate, but thanks to its success, its viewership and requests from its viewers, Life in Kosovo improved and expanded its content, and is now two-hours long.

Now, in addition to the studio debate, the show includes other columns depicting life in the country and the day-to-day problems of its citizens. So far, BIRN has produced nearly 200 episodes of Life in Kosovo, which have been broadcast weekly by Radio-Television Kosovo (RTK) on a primetime Thursday slot, at 8:20 PM.

Life in Kosovo employs 30 journalists, monitors, investigators, technical and administrative personnel. Through careful moderation, insightful investigative reports and provocative questions in the studio, Life in Kosovo tries to behave as a watchful guardian, of the kind Kosovo’s government and society are craving for.

The show’s content

The debates conducted on Life in Kosovo cover government and parliamentary activities; the concerns of non-Albanian Kosovars; economic issues; property rights; civil rights, and so on. Through these TV debates, officials are asked to respond to the concerns of citizens on whose behalf they are in authority.

In addition, the show includes field reports on the aforementioned topics, posing provocative questions to decision-makers and concerned parties, to stand alongside the studio debates. At all times, the show deals with the most important recent political and social issues.

Alongside the field reports, other televised reports are also broadcast, in order to encourage panel discussions and to inform the audience. Many of these reports have unveiled corruption, conflicts of interest, and cases of the abuse of power. On top of this, a number of exclusive interview s have been broadcast over the show’s life.

Later in its development, Life in Kosovo was enriched with other columns, such as ’Culture in Kosovo’ and ‘The Week’s Highlights’.

In the former, BIRN aims to encourage cultural development. With an alternative approach towards cultural and artistic events, the reports include comments by critics on expositions, shows and movies produced mainly by Albanian artists, but also covering work by figures from the wider region figures.

On the other hand, ‘The Week’s Highlights’ highlights positive initiatives by both civil servants and citizens, in order to promote such good activities.

Breaking taboos Even though current affairs and Kosovo’s political life are frequently discussed topics on television and radio shows, they are not the only ones to provoke debate.

Life in Kosovo has therefore discussed many other controversial topics, thus becoming the first show to break a number of taboos surrounding sensitive topics such as homosexuality, war crimes and the freedom of speech.

In this way, Life in Kosovo familiarised its viewers with many issues that had not been discussed in public before, due to their sensitivity and “immunity”, encouraging people to approach such topics with open minds.

Electoral and Municipal Debates

In addition to its weekly debates, Life in Kosovo has earned a reputation for organising electoral and post-electoral debates in Kosovo’s municipalities, including the smaller municipalities that are rarely discussed in other national media.

For its electoral debates in November 2007, Life in Kosovo organised 51 public debates, covering the first and second rounds of the elections.

These were the first debates to bring together all the candidates from each municipality of Kosovo. Thus, by posing challenging questions, these debates enabled citizens to be better informed about candidates’ political programmes, and thereby decide on the candidate who most suited their interests.

As a follow-up, Life in Kosovo organised debates on how successfully the elected mayors were able to fulfil their election promises. These debates covered all of Kosovo’s municipalities, and contributed to the development of transparency in local government.

 

Donors

BIRN Kosovo is generously supported by the following donors:

National Endowment for Democracy supports BIRN’s main project: the weekly televised debates in Life in Kosovo. http://www.ned.org/

The Rockefellers Brothers Fund is the main donor for BIRN’s public services monitoring project. http://www.rbf.org/

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation generously supports the public services monitoring project. http://www.mott.org/

Balkan Trust for Democracy has supported BIRN’s public service monitoring project since November 2008 http://www.gmfus.org/balkantrust/

BIRN’s televised debates in Life in Kosovo, trainings and public service monitoring projects are financed by European Union, EU and supported by the European Commission Liaison Office.http://ec.europa.eu/

The Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since November 2009, supports BIRN for the implementation of a one-year project on media reporting and monitoring of local governance. http://www.eda.admin.ch/pristina

The United Nations Democracy Fund supports the partnership of BIRN, Kosovo Democratic Institute and National Democratic Institute, which is implementing the ‘Strengthening the Protection of Civil Society in Kosovo’ project.

Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo supports the production of Life in Kosovo’s weekly debateshttp://www.raiffeisen-kosovo.com/

Kosovar Civil Society Foundation, KCSF supports BIRN in the implementation of three debates and two short documentaries on Kosovo’s future integration in the European Union. http://www.kcsfoundation.org/

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and World Learning/Forecast have supported BIRN in the running of electoral and post-electoral municipal debates included in Life in Kosovo

BIRN’s main previous donors have been:

The Balkan Trust for Democracy, BTD was among the first donors to support BIRN on launching the “Life in Kosovo” current affairs show in 2005. Ever since then, BTD has granted several funds supporting the TV debates project as well as election debates.

The National Endowment for Democracy, NED has continuously supported BIRN”s “Life in Kosovo” TV debates project since 2006.

The Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs has supported BIRN’s one-year project of Live TV debates between Serbs and Albanians

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund have been the main BIRN supporters for the production of election TV debate shows covering the first and second rounds of the mayoral elections in Kosovo.

In the past, BIRN was also supported by:

United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Resource Center, Advocacy Training and Resource Center, FDI, IREX, East-West Management Institute, Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, the British Council, FIQ, ILO, MDA, Post and Telecom of Kosovo.