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Description
The project is watch-dog activity, which monitors, through investigative journalism in disadvantaged Ústí region, how authorities administer public affairs. There is no other targeted investigative in the region now. An important source of journalistic work will be data from cooperating NGOs, whom we will provide professional journalistic processing, while also providing them with feedback and media training. HlídacíPes.org has been operating in the region since 2017, the author Robert Malecký is the holder of the Journalism Prize for regional journalism for 2017 and the nominee of 2018. The web HlidaciPes.org will regurlarly publish articles on the situation within the region and will elaborate and publish analysis with the cooperation of other NGOs.
Summary of project results
The problem of towns and municipalities in the Ústí nad Labem region is that there is virtually no quality journalism covering both mainstream news and investigative topics. The region itself is one of the most structurally affected regions, with high levels of corruption, low trust in institutions, low willingness to participate in decision-making and low involvement in civil society. A key problem is the low educational and social structure of the population.
Failure to address the problems is exacerbated by the media approach: the media is either represented by the regional mainstream, but only shallowly covers the issues. Moreover, at the time of election campaigns, it is directly dependent on advertising sources. Then there are the individual small regional pseudo-media, which live directly on the money allocated by local governments. This is a form of political corruption, which we highlighted in our series of reports on news buying - for which we were nominated for a Journalism Award.
At the moment, HlídacíPes.org is perceived in Ústí nad Labem as the only media outlet that has long been dedicated to exposing malpractice in public administration. We have the trust of cooperating NGOs, which themselves draw attention to the problems, enter into administrative proceedings, but do not have sufficient access to the media or their findings are relativized.
Another problem is the lack of media education of both the NGOs themselves and the population, especially the younger ones, who should prospectively take co-responsibility for decision-making.
The consequence is a deepening lack of interest in public affairs, low willingness to run for office or participate in participation programmes, a high corruption perception index, and disgust. As a result, this means a spiral leading to a deepening of the problems of civil society in North Bohemia and the departure of "brains" from the region.
The main objective was to increase public interest in the way elected representatives manage local governments and how authorities handle the resources and powers they are entrusted with. We particularly targeted youth groups (15-29) including media education and adults 30+.
Outpus:
- Full-size website, 15 to 20 articles per month. Exclusively on own findings, one to two major investigative topics per month.
- Increased public interest in topics of corruption, handling of public money, and the way government is run.
- Attention drawn to the topics covered by HlídacíPes.org.
- Engagement of nonprofit organizations and the gradual addition of others that will become sources for project outputs.
- Media training in schools
Our personal impression is that the impact of our project was more in the long-term "hidden" work than having a direct measurable effect. There is no societal change, in the case of
North-West Bohemia, we are witnessing further underdevelopment, which on the contrary is measurable and we have also described it - whether in the economic, economic, social
situation of the population, education, etc. If anyone has understood that the state of the media also plays an important role in this, that is one small bonus. My personal view is very pesimistic.