What Western Media Gets Wrong About the Balkans

A Country That Cannot Be Understood Quickly

What do we really understand about the Balkans after years of living, travelling and reporting here?

That question sits at the heart of my latest conversation with Austrian journalist Christoph Baumgarten, the man behind Balkan Stories.

Christoph and I first met in Banja Luka in 2017. At the time, Balkan Stories was still relatively young and he was setting out to do something that immediately appealed to me: tell the smaller, more complicated stories from this region that rarely fit neatly into conventional foreign reporting.

Nine years later, we sat down together again in Banja Luka.

A lot has changed. Some things, perhaps disappointingly, have not.

The media landscape is different too. Christoph talks candidly about the frustration of trying to reach readers when algorithms change and independent work becomes harder to surface. Yet he has made peace with the fact that Balkan Stories may always have a relatively modest audience. For him, the value is in doing work that would otherwise go untold.

Christoph still travels extensively through Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and the wider region, looking beyond the obvious headlines. But he admits that his optimism has been tested.

Nationalism has not disappeared in the way he once hoped it might.

At the same time, he rejects the lazy idea that nationalism is somehow an unavoidable or inherent Balkan characteristic. Circumstances create it, he argues, and circumstances can change.

What Western Journalism Misses

One of the most interesting parts of our conversation concerned Western reporting of the Balkans.

Christoph believes the problem is often less about individual journalists than the system around them. Foreign correspondents work with limited time and space, while editors hundreds of kilometres away may know very little about the countries they are trying to explain.

Complex stories become punchlines.

Familiar stereotypes are easier to publish than messy realities.

He gives a striking example from reporting on Serbia's student-led protest movement, where an analysis of the demonstrations managed, astonishingly, to overlook the central role of the students themselves.

It raises a question that interests me increasingly after more than two decades living in Bosnia:

Can an outsider ever really understand another country?

Somewhere Between Insider and Outsider

Christoph describes himself as an outsider, but also, at times, as a kind of translator.

Not simply a translator of language, but of perspectives.

Travelling frequently between Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia has shown him how differently neighbouring societies can understand exactly the same event.

That resonated with me.

I recently asked my wife Tamara whether, after all these years, I had finally integrated into Bosnian life.

Her answer was essentially no.

Apparently I remain, and probably always will remain, an Englishman.

Perhaps there is something useful about occupying that space between insider and outsider.

Our conversation also touches on the emotional limits of journalism. Christoph tells me why he has never wanted to report from the Srebrenica anniversary.

Some stories, he says simply, are not his to tell.

Reasons for Hope

Despite some pessimism, this is not a conversation without hope.

Christoph has watched living standards improve across much of the region. Roads are better. People travel more freely between neighbouring countries. Everyday exchanges are becoming more normal.

But another enormous change is approaching.

Bosnia and much of the Western Balkans face serious demographic decline as younger people leave.

Christoph believes countries here will eventually face a difficult choice: create far better reasons for people to stay, or accept much greater immigration from elsewhere.

Either way, the Balkans of the future will look different.

Nine years after our first conversation, Christoph and I still don't claim to have understood the Balkans.

Perhaps the more interesting thing is that we're still trying.