BRANKICA STANKOVIC

 BRANKICA STANKOVIC

Brankica Stanković (born October 1975) is a prominent Serbian investigative journalist reporting on topics of crime and political corruption in Serbia. She is the main writer of the investigative television news programme Insajder (Serbian for "Insider") produced by the B92 television between 2004 and 2015, and by Stanković's own news production company since 2016.

Her reports led to much controversy, and she routinely receives death threats. For that reason, she has been placed under 24 hours police protection since December 2009. Brankica is the only journalist in Serbia who lives with the 24-hour police security.

She began her career as a journalist for radio and television company RTV Studio B in 1996, where she spent a year. In 1997, she switched to Radio B92, where she has been working ever since. During the 1990s, B92 was a prominent pro-democracy news broadcasting company, opposed to the corrupt regime of then-president Slobodan Milošević. She also worked as a foreign correspondent for Sveriges Radio and German Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

In 2004, B92 television launched a program called Insajder (Insider), with Stanković as chief editor. It is an investigative TV program whose aim is to expose political corruption and political crime in Serbia. Since 2004, nineteen seasons of Insajder were broadcast, two each year, with each season containing between two and nine episodes, 82 episodes in total (as of October 2013).

In 2016, Stanković quit job at B92 in order to launched her own news production company and investigative internet portal Insajder.net. Her company continued producing the "Insajder" programme for B92 television (renamed "O2 television" in 2017). Insajder.ner also produces several other TV programmes ("Insajder debata", "Insajder bez ograničenja") broadcast in syndication by N1 television and TV Prva.

In 2013, B92 published Stanković's autobiographic book titled "Insajder: My Story".  In 2014, she was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award given by International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF).

She has won more than 15 national and international recognitions and awards.

The OSCE, which consists of 56 member states, decided in 2010 to make an exception and, unlike all previous years, when several people were chosen as the person of the year, that year only Brankica Stanković was chosen as the person of the year of Serbia. She is the only journalist from the Balkans about whom the famous British magazine Monocl wrote. Journalists from the Danish-Norwegian production made documentaries about six people from all over the world who, according to their assessment, are the greatest freedom fighters. Reporters Without Borders ranked Brankica Stanković among the 100 heroes of the world and among the 10 most inspiring journalists in the world. In 2014, she was awarded the Courage Award in New York and Los Angeles, which is better known in the United States as the Journalist Oscar. 2018 Brankica wins “Engaged Journalism” award.