The 2016 contests for EU awards for investigative journalism in Western Balkans and Turkey are now closed in all seven countries.
Institutions managed to alienate energetics so that it is incomprehensible for the citizens
Maja Zivanovic, journalist of VOICE won the irst prize in the amount of 4000 EUR in gross for a series of investigative articles about the natural gas distributor, Novi Sad Gas, whose debts to the company Srbijagas, from which it purchases energy, has doubled for two years, reaching 6.89 billion dinars, despite a good collection.
“I think the biggest problem is that the energetics is considered to be an expert topic because the institutions managed to alienate this subject so that it is incomprehensible for the citizens. At the beginning I had to read through all the laws and then ask anyone to first explain to me, in a simplest way possible, what the energetic is. Only then when I realised what it is about, who has the interest in all of it and how much money comes from it, had I begun to understand why any of us could not make sense of it” said Živanović.
The absolute winner added that the biggest challenge for any journalist in Vojvodina writing about energetics is the Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS) which is also a private company and the issues of mineral rent and exploitation of oil and gas.