Nevenka Ćirović, the Vice President of the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro (SMCG), was appointed to the Supervisory Board within the regional project “Support to Public Media Services in the Western Balkans,” safejounralists.net reports.

The task of the Supervisory Board is to monitor the implementation of the Agreement on technical cooperation of public services of the Western Balkans, which was signed at a two-day conference in Tirana. Ćirović will, on behalf of SMCG, be included in the advisory and evaluation part of the project, as well as the part related to monitoring.

The conference was organized as a formal start of project worth 1.5 million euros, which will last for two years. It is financed by the European Union and implemented by a consortium consisting of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Public Media Service of Austria (ORF), the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Eurovision News Exchange for Southeast Europe (ERNO).

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to the reform and professional development of media public services in the Western Balkans in order to encourage the production of pluralistic, independent and credible program content.

Project beneficiaries are six public media services in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. The beneficiaries of this project are also the parliamentary bodies responsible for the media, regulatory agencies, as well as the administrative bodies of public media services.

The leader of the team is the media expert from Montenegro, Vojo Raonić, and the regional office is located in Podgorica, in the building of Radio Television of Montenegro.

As stated during the Tirana conference, the intention is to jointly reach the reference framework for independent and professional media and models of financing public services, the appointment and functioning of the control bodies-councils and public service boards, using best practice and with the EU’s highest standards.

At the same time, the cooperation between six public services will be strengthened in the process of media reform, long-term development strategies, editorial guide, integrated newsdesk development, development of investigative journalism and the exchange of digitized archival material.

During the project, a series of consultations, targeted training, meeting and study visits will be organized.