Bosnian citizens trust the media the most (61.8 percent), followed by 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 the Friedrich-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.

When it comes to entities, only 37.6 percent of respondents from Republika Srpska (RS) 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.

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.

The vast majority of BiH residents do not approve of any form of violence against journalists – 87.4 percent of respondents, but 12.6 percent of respondents still believe that “in some cases, attacks on journalists are justified”.

There is a worryingly large number of citizens in all of BiH who are not informed with the criminalization of defamation in the RS – as many as 40 percent of respondents. 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.

TV is slowly losing its primacy over other media in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the first source of information. TV is used as the first source by 39.7 percent of citizens, while 38.6 percent of respondents use the Internet as their first source of information. Social media as the first source of information is used by 18.4 percent of respondents.