Reporters Without Borders (RSF) concludes a Journalism Trust Initiative Fast Track program in the Western Balkans and in Turkey, as part of UNESCO’s program “Building Trust in Media in South-East Europe: Support to Journalism as a Public Good.” 25 news outlets received dedicated support from partners, such as local press councils and experts, to navigate their self-assessment with the requirements of the international standard for transparent, ethical journalism. Our partners tell us why this program is important for journalism.
To support the adoption of JTI by news sources, RSF has launched JTI Fast Track programs around the world, the most recent of them taking place in Armenia, Italy, Guinea Bissau or Ukraine. To do so, local partners are carefully selected to mentor and support a number of media outlets in their self-evaluation with the JTI criteria. The goal is to maximise the adherence of participants with ethical rules, approved journalistic methods, and guarantees of independence.
“In times when media and journalism are endangered more than ever. In an age when basic postulates of our profession are questioned like never before, professional and ethical standards in journalism are becoming more and more valuable. Accurate, impartial and objective information are our only tools to fight the enormous amount of disinformation and manipulation we are facing. In this context, JTI cooperation with the Media Council for Self-regulation of Montenegro to train professional media in the Western Balkan region, is one more significant project to defend professional journalism.”
Ranko Vujovic, Executive secretary, Media Council for Self-regulation of Montenegro (Medijski savjet za samoregulaciju)
The Media Council for Self-regulation (MSS), based in Montenegro, provides support to media outlets at home, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia. Hosts of the annual conference of the Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe (AIPCE) in September this year, to which the JTI team took part, one of the main topics the MSS brought to the stage was how journalists and media manage to uphold ethical standards despite political pressures and wartime circumstances.
“The Albanian Media Council has long sought a transparent and methodologically sound approach to certify ethical journalism. We firmly believe the public deserves clear means to identify media outlets that maintain the highest professional standards.
For years, we struggled to develop a methodology that was both comprehensive and genuinely unbiased. Then, JTI came along. When the Journalism Trust Initiative approached us with their rigorous, transparent certification framework, we recognized we had found the solution we’d been seeking.
JTI’s methodology is proven, it’s operational, and it aligns perfectly with our mission. By embracing this partnership, we’ve equipped our audiences with a powerful tool to identify media that not only follow fundamental ethical standards, but actively strive to exceed them.
This collaboration represents exactly what we envisioned: a credible, independent way to distinguish quality journalism in an increasingly complex media landscape.”Koloreto Cukali, chairman of the Albanian Media Council (Këshilli Shqiptar i Medias)
The Albanian Media Council (AMC) supports the deployment of JTI in Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo. Back in November 2024, RSF the AMC unveiled a comprehensive roadmap to safeguard press freedom and the right to information in Albania, with three main goals: strengthening journalist safety, safeguarding media independence and pluralism, and supporting sustainability and public trust in the media (notably, by leveraging Journalism Trust Initiative).
