EU Journalism Awards: A Tactic to Muzzle Kosovo’s Investigative Reporters

The EU’s awards for investigative journalism in Kosovo are not about promoting excellence—they’re about suppressing scrutiny and controlling the narrative of corruption.

Journalistic excellence is a lofty ideal, one that investigative journalists dedicate their lives to pursuing, often at great personal risk and for little material reward. Yet, when institutions with political power offer rewards for "excellence," the integrity of the profession comes into question. The European Union’s Investigative Journalism Award, now a familiar annual event in Kosovo, serves as a prime example of how political entities seek to control narratives and limit the journalistic eye that should be trained on them.

The origins of this practice, introduced by the EU mission following multiple corruption scandals in Kosovo, signal troubling intentions. Since 2014, when investigative journalists exposed EULEX's deep-rooted corruption and mismanagement in Kosovo, the EU's mission in the country has faced little to no further professional media scrutiny. One wonders: have the scandals vanished, or has the EU's new-found fondness for awarding journalists strategically minimised…