Foreign Policy Magazine takes a look at CIN’s first series “Health care on Life Support” in its May/June issue.
Writer Richard Byrne, a former media critic and Pew Fellow in Sarajevo, notes the challenges to Bosnian media and raises the question of whether a new media program such as CIN makes sense when so many others have failed.
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He concludes it does.
“CIN’s first effort…shows that sometimes dogged journalism can beat the odds,” Byrne says. “The thoroughness of CIN’s reporting is particularly impressive, considering the obstacles investigative journalists face in a media environment as unstable … as Bosnia’s.”
In particular, Byrne notes that local media relies heavily on leaks and not on public records, which are difficult to get.
However, “the series relies on careful scrutiny of public health budgets and government audits of state agencies. Indeed, the strongest findings to emerge are rooted not in anonymous sources, but aggressive questioning of ministers combined with hard facts and figures.”
Foreign Policy is a publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
