Within the annual conference “The first regional forum of equality bodies of South-East Europe”, for the second time The Commissioner for Protection of Equality and OSCE organized Media awards ceremony.

The Commissioner for Protection of Equality Brankica Jankovic and the Head of OSCE mission in Serbia -Andrea Orizio emphasized the importance and the role of the media in building a tolerant society, without discrimination.

The Commissioner’s Chief of staff-Antigona Andonov stated that the jury tried to distinguish the best works from the great number of received submissions in accordance to good practices of journalism, media ethics and standards of the competition.

On the other hand, she pointed out that, although the media space contained overwhelming content on the topic of domestic and partner violence, there weren’t any journalist that applied to the competition who upheld the professional and ethical standards and followed this topic without sensationalism, victimization and relativisation.

After the clarification of the jury, The Commissioner Jankovic and the Head of mission Orizio, handed the awards to winning journalists.

In the category of “press/Online” the first prize was awarded to the journalist of BETA news agency-Bojana Milovanovic for the text published in the Novi magazine weekly, titled “Old age as a new beginning”. The second prize was awarded to the journalist of CINS Filip Rudić for the article “Child refugees in danger of exploitation”., while third prize was given to the journalist of the Danas daily Jelena Dikovic who was writing about the position of the LGBZ community in her text titled “From death threats to strikes to the head, stomach and spine”.

In the category of “News report”, the jury decided to award the first prize to journalist and editor of the Novi magazine weekly- Nadezda Gace for the TV report named “They move boundaries – life in an open community”. The second prize was given to journalists of VICE Serbia – Olivera Milenkovic and Misko Bilbija for a TV report “Dubravko” from their “One life” series. The journalist of RTS-Tatjana Manojlovic is the winner of the third prize in this category for the report “Life and standards: The right to justice”.

As for “Radio/TV report”, the first prize was given to the journalist-Biljana Radulovic for her report “In Serbia 19000 people are deprived of their legal capacity”. Second prize was awarded to the joundalist of TV B92 – Jelena Kikic for her report “Child beggars – except for compassion, what else can we do?”. The journalist of the N1 televison – Adam Santovac received the third prize and he covered the position of members of the LGBT community in his report “LGBT parade can be done in a different way”.

This year a prize was awarded for the first time for the best student paper and the winners were Dunja Funduk and Teodora Gavrilovic for their paper “Women on the men’s task”, which was published in the “Zurnalist”.