Via B92.net from Monocle Magazine

Brankica Stankovic presents Serbia’s hard-hitting investigative TV show Insajder (Insider). In Serbia, where political corruption has gone unpunished and the media shies away from controversy, she represents a fresh voice. But at a cost…

Outside the B92 office, a dreary four-storey building set back from a four-lane highway in downtown Belgrade, two armed policemen stand guard. Four men – tall, stocky, military haircuts – lean against an unmarked car, staring at everyone who passes. Inside the lobby, two more police officers sit on a sofa, drinking Coke from plastic cups.

And behind them, on a wall that shows large publicity photos of the independent TV and radio station’s grinning news anchors, is a picture of the woman they are paid to protect. Brankica Stankovic is the only person on the wall not smiling and, fittingly, her face is half obscured. For the past seven years, Stankovic has fronted Insajder, an unrelenting investigative series that tackles organised crime, drug smuggling and political corruption, which has become B92’s best-rated programme.

It’s a show watched avidly by the police too – arrests tend to follow the morning after. There’s been no shortage of stories for Stankovic and her team to investigate. More than a decade after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia remains a country struggling to find its way. The country’s prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, was assassinated in 2003, while Milosevic’s general, Ratko Mladic, who was responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, remains at large and is believed to be protected by senior officials within the security forces.

Read the full story here: B92.net