At the end of March, SWR published the episode “Shortly before war?

The Fragile Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina”.

The episode was intended to address the political situation in Bosnia and the causes of the burgeoning Serbian nationalism in the region.

How she did it, following her self-description that "young people from other countries have their say in conversations with SWR hosts" and "subjective insights into the everyday life of young people from abroad" are offered, is remarkable - one interviewee denied that of Serb forces committed genocide against Muslim Bosniaks in Srebrenica in July 1995 and distorted the historical facts of the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Podcast hosts Malcolm Ohanwe and Merve Kayikci hosted 22-year-old ethnic Serbian Milica.

The politics student was born in 1999, four years after the end of the Bosnian war.

In the ARD podcast, she says that she doesn't know whether there really was a genocide in Bosnia - because when it happened, she wasn't personally "on site".

The genocide committed by Serbian troops against Bosniaks - the murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995 - is considered one of the most serious war crimes in Europe since World War II.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice classified the crime as genocide.

In total, more than 100,000 people lost their lives in the war in former Yugoslavia.

Revised podcast description contains misstatements

The Bosnian journalist and film author Melina Borčak, who works for CNN, Deutsche Welle and ARD, among others, asked the Südwestrundfunk, which is responsible for the podcast "Sack Reis", about the matter.

The broadcaster initially ignored her efforts, she says.

Only after several days and repeated follow-up did the broadcaster present a revised version of the podcast.

However, as Borčak observed, the revised podcast description also contained generalizing and falsifying statements such as: "Back then, people fought because of their ethnicity." Borčak corrected: "People of all ethnic groups and religions fought together in the Bosnian army against the genocides.” In the specialist magazine “journalist”, Borčak reports in detail how she tried to get the SWR to listen.

Her impression of the preparation of the podcast: "There were no primary sources, no on-site research, no fact check of the copied content, no thematic expertise.

But: The editors read a few texts by other German journalists and cobbled something together.

In my opinion, such methods are sufficient for a school presentation,

Borčak gives an example: In a post to the podcast, a photo of the Ferhadija Mosque in the city of Banja Luka was shown - "one of the symbols of genocide and aggressive war.

All of the city's Muslims and Catholics were murdered, expelled or deported to the Manjača concentration camp – an animal slaughterhouse that was converted into a human slaughterhouse.

All mosques and Catholic churches were destroyed, including the centuries-old Unesco World Heritage Mosque Ferhadija.

When displaced people tried to rebuild the Ferhadija after the war, they were hunted down and attacked by a mob of hundreds of local Serbs until one man, Murat Badić, died by stoning.” SWR reported about the Ferhadija and other destroyed mosques and Catholic churches written in the city: “In Banja Luka there are orthodox churches,