Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina trust the media the most (61.8 percent) and religious communities (56.7 percent), while political parties and politicians gained the least trust from citizens (16.6 percent).
These are the results of research conducted from March 21 to April 11 by Fridrih Ebert Stiftung in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Association of BH Journalists on a sample of 516 respondents.
Polls showed that citizens trust the non-governmental sector with 44.4 percent, the international community with 45.8 percent, and government institutions in general with 43.1 percent.
Compared to 2023, citizens’ trust in the media has decreased by 5 percent, and in the international community – in the Republika Srpska, even half of respondents do not trust the international community.
One of the main conclusions of this year’s research is that more than half of respondents believe that media freedom is partially present, 54.3 percent.
When it comes to entities, in the RS only 37.6 percent of respondents believe that media freedom is partially present, and slightly less than 30.9 percent that it is completely present. In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), a significantly larger proportion of respondents than in the RS believe that media freedom is partially present (63.8 percent), while only 10.7 percent think that it is fully present.
Respondents are almost equally satisfied with the work of the media and journalists compared to 2023. In this part, the assessments in the entities differ significantly: in the RS, two-thirds of respondents are dissatisfied with the work of the media and journalists, or 65.8 percent. In the FBiH, satisfaction with the work of the media and journalists increased by 10 percent.
Most respondents believe that political dependence is the biggest obstacle to media freedom (57.7 percent), followed by the general political climate at 32 percent. According to the opinion of RS citizens, the two main obstacles to free journalism are political dependence (52.2 percent) and financial dependence (37.6 percent). In FBiH, 59.7 percent of respondents recognize political dependence as an obstacle to free journalism, as well as the general political climate (28.8 percent).
The vast majority of BiH residents do not approve of any form of violence against journalists – 87.4 percent of respondents, but still 12.6 percent of respondents believe that “in some cases, attacks on journalists are justified.” In the RS, more than a quarter of respondents still approve of violence against journalists – 26.4 percent of respondents, which is a significantly lower percentage than in 2023 (74.1 percent) and is still a really worrying figure. In FBiH, violence is approved by 5.2 percent of respondents.
In the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is a worryingly large number of citizens who are not familiar with the criminalization of defamation in the RS – as many as 40 percent of those surveyed. Almost half of the inhabitants of the RS are not familiar with the criminalization of defamation in that entity, and in FBiH that percentage is around 34 percent. In both entities, citizens are aware of the negative consequences of the criminalization of defamation – in the RS this opinion is shared by 30.9 percent of respondents, and in the Federation by 39.9 percent.
As the first source of information, TV is slowly losing its primacy over other media in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. TV is used as the first source by 39.7 percent of citizens, and the greater half use the Internet 38.6 percent and social networks 18.4 percent. In the RS, the Internet is the first source of information for 59 percent of respondents, followed by social networks (28.7 percent), while only 18.5 percent of respondents use TV for information purposes. TV is still the predominant source of information for 51.5 percent of respondents in the FBiH, followed by the Internet at 31.6 percent, and social networks at 13.2 percent, reported BH Journalists.
