20th Anniversary of the Regional Network of Media Institutes in South East Europe

Peace Institute and other co-founders of SEENPM celebrate 20th anniversary of this regional network of media institutes and media centers in South East Europe. It was established in Sarajevo, in February 2000, aiming at providing framework for cooperation and mutual support to media development in the region in the post-conflict period.

SEENPM (South East European Network for Profession­alization of Media) is now a network of 19 media centres and institutes across 13 countries of South Eastern Europe: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey.

SEENPM promotes excellence in journalism through policy initiatives, research and training. It aims to protect and defend freedom of the media, support the development of independent media and journalism professional standards, and strengthen cooperation among journalists.

Two decades of the regional network have been spent in attempts to intervene through regional cooperation to make the media in these countries serve democracy. Since 2000, dozens of regional actions have been carried out – from training and exchange of journalists, editors and media managers, the promotion of media ethics and self-regulation, mapping media ownership and its impact on media pluralism and independence, to examining labour relations in the media, developing a regional award scheme for investigative journalism, empowering journalists and activists for fact-checking and countering disinformation, addressing corrupt policies and practices in the media systems and advocating for media integrity as a guiding principle of media reforms, and finally supporting development of media and information literacy in the region. All our efforts for media development in the region have been about strengthening public service values in media and journalism and contributing to informed citizenship.

Peace Institute has been among most active members of the SEENPM network, leading and participating in numerous regional projects together with other network members, such as project on media ownership and its impact on media independence and pluralism, project South East European Media Observatory with focus on media integrity, project Media for Citizens, Citizens for Media promoting media and information literacy, etc.