Guide for Investigative Journalists in Their Work with Whistleblowers in SEE

In other regions – and Southeast Europe is among them – there are not long traditions of whistleblowing or working with whistleblowers. Journalists often misunderstand what whistleblowing is and who the whistleblower is. Media are not aware of how whistleblowing works.

This makes Southeast Europe a bit different landscape for whistleblowing.

The aim of this Guide is to stimulate journalists in the region to get to know better how whistleblowing works and how to communicate with whistleblowers as potential good sources of information.

The Guide also may help whistleblowers to recognize and understand journalists as good partner in their important work without jeopardizing their own safety.

The manual focuses on:

• How different is SEE as a landscape for whistleblowing;

• How journalists from the region can work safely with whistleblowers;

• What media and reporters should take into consideration when they work on a story involving whistleblowing;

• How journalists should protect both their sources of information and themselves in the process of investigating and reporting evidence of wrongdoing and abuse of power;

• What the laws about protecting whistleblowers in Southeast Europe are;

• And last but not least: how to report government and corporate law-breaking without breaking the law, as the definition of the U,S, legal organization Whistleblower Aid says.