Albania: press freedom crushed by the weight of politics

Professional ethics almost absent, media capture by politics, and financial unsustainability are just some of the main issues that make the Albanian media landscape particularly alarming.

Interview of the AMC chairman Cukali, for the website Balcanicaucaso

28/06/2024 – Luisa Chiodi 

Media independence is a topic that raises many concerns in Albania, especially in light of an almost total control by the government that has turned the main communication channels into instruments of political propaganda. We talked to Koloreto Cukali, a journalist and producer who has chaired the Albanian Media Council since 2017, an organization aimed at establishing ethical standards for the journalistic profession and introducing media self-regulation mechanisms.

You lead the Albanian Media Council, an organization that promotes media self-regulation. What is it about?

The Albanian Media Council is a product of, I would say, European import. The EU supports media self-regulation and pushes for the creation of so-called media councils [as also provided for by the recently adopted European Media Freedom Regulation, ed.]. These are bodies to which the public can turn to file complaints about media conduct.

It wasn’t easy to establish this Council, it’s a journey we started a few years ago and our government has done everything to sabotage it.

Albanian politics has always tried to control the media, but the current prime minister has engaged more than others in this sense: unable to show concrete results, he works on media propaganda to show that everything is fine.

One way or another, the Albanian government controls most of the television networks. The Media Ownership Monitor study conducted by BIRN examines exactly this capillary control of traditional media by the government. In the case of TV, most of the owners are businessmen, the so-called oligarchs, who in exchange for pro-government propaganda obtain public contracts. It’s a situation that has lasted for years.

The only field that the prime minister and the mayor of Tirana – the two most important people in the country – cannot fully control are online media. For years they have sought to introduce a defamation law that would also regulate online media. Our Council has tried to block it with a mobilization campaign; we received the support of many journalists and media and also the European Union supported us for a while. At one point, the Venice Commission also intervened with an opinion that evaluated and in fact dismantled the proposed law.

There are European regulations that Albania will have to introduce sooner or later: the new directive against SLAPP, for example, goes in the opposite direction of our prime minister, but this is a topic that is still not talked about in Albania.

Unfortunately, there are many problems, there is a lot of defamation, professional ethics is at the lowest level ever. The media blackmail politicians, businessmen, to make money. There is no good climate.

The Albanian Media Council strives to counteract this trend, especially in terms of journalism ethics. A rather difficult task…

It is difficult because the government is doing everything to sabotage this initiative. The prime minister needs to say that self-regulation doesn’t work and the media close to the government do not participate in our initiative because someone has put pressure on them.

Are there no professional organizations or journalists’ unions in Albania?

No, there are only associations that deal with the media, but they are not unions, nor professional organizations, and none of these organizations are able to mobilize as a union would.

What do you think is the reason?

It’s a long story. The unions were devastated by the communist regime. We don’t have a true trade union tradition. Then the dictatorship ruined the collaborative spirit of the population. People no longer want to be part of an organization because for 45 years they were forced to be part of party organizations.

However, there have been some movements: for example, for environmental protection there have been initiatives that have moved Albanian society.

Personally, I don’t see a real impact even in this case. This type of movement can make a difference only if they manage to engage the European Union or some other international organization that says “No, you can’t do this,” because here every resistance is useless.

So political interference is a fundamental problem.

The business model is the real problem of the media. In recent years the public no longer pays: before there were newspapers, the public bought them, now no one wants to pay anymore because it is expected that information is free.

Here the numbers are lacking to keep even small publications afloat. The funds for the media are public and controlled by politics or come from oligarchs who buy advertisements. Then there is money coming from organized crime, from drugs, from crime…

There is no way to be financially independent. Solving the resource problem solves almost everything. The solution is only one: the European Union must finance the media, that is, find mechanisms that, for a period say of 5 years, make the media strong and independent.

Today the only media that make a difference are those financed by donors, for example BIRN, Citizens Channel, Faktoje.al, but they are very few. Instead, commercial media that want to do good journalism need to be helped.

What is the situation regarding the safety of journalists in Albania?

A member of our Ethics Council, who is also a professor at the University of Tirana, once told me: “In Albania journalists are not killed because there is no need, journalism has already been killed.” The government doesn’t need to threaten journalists, it solves issues directly by dealing with the media owners.

There are threats that come from organized crime, but from what I know many journalists no longer report them because they perceive that the police are not very motivated to help journalists.

Has the European integration process played a role in these years for the protection of media freedom in Albania?

I don’t see any real impact. For example, a few months ago, [the government] made some additions to the law on the Audiovisual Media Authority, but did just the bare minimum required. Even though the Venice Commission expressed itself clearly, [the government] only made minor, formal changes…

We have tried to put some pressure, but very often it’s not known what happens, almost nothing is transparent. Now it is said that they are working on Chapter 21 of the acquis (dedicated to trans-European networks, ed.), but it is not known who, what, how, when they are doing it. There is no transparency at any level.

Even when [the government] meets with representatives of the OSCE or the Council of Europe, no one comes to us and the consultations are often only formal.

In your opinion, what role do international media play? If they talk about Albania and raise certain issues, do they have an impact also internally?

Two or three years ago I met an Italian journalist who worked as a freelancer for several outlets and she told me: “If I write critically about Albania, no one publishes me, they told me clearly…”

Then there are cases when the Albanian prime minister is hosted on an Italian program and no one asks him any real questions…

this material was translated from English using AI.