BY ESIONA KONOMI
The new parliament and government will emerge from the spring elections and will be monitored by the media in a limited manner, without the possibility of direct reporting.
This is the fourth campaign where political parties will keep journalists away from event sites, as they have installed their systems for recording, editing, and broadcasting electoral activities.
Reporters do not receive notifications from candidates, including prime minister candidates, about their daily or weekly agendas. In this way, journalists cannot follow on-the-ground meetings between electoral subjects and voters.
Even if the media learns about certain meetings through informal sources and wants to report from the locations, this is not allowed by the candidates’ security staff and press offices. This is especially true for the leading figures of the political parties.
Journalists are invited, or rather, forced to follow these electoral activities via live streams on the candidates’ social media channels, through broadcast productions where the camera is turned on/off or focused in ways that serve the propagandistic goals of the campaign.
In other cases, newsrooms receive ready-made materials that are edited, packaged, and embellished in detail by the press offices of the candidates. This format does not provide a 360-degree view. Critical voices are missing, and not all key players are included in the activities.
The Albanian Journalists’ Association (AGSH) has continuously expressed concern about this situation.
Isa Myzyraj, President of AGSH, said that the ready-made footage of political activities or the activities of various institutions “is nothing more than propaganda and a major blow to journalism, press freedom, and democracy.”
“Journalists and the media should be allowed access to every public activity, regardless of who organizes it, to follow it closely and report according to their perspective for the public. All efforts to serve ready-made footage to the media have nothing to do with media freedom but are aimed at hindering journalists’ work by presenting a reality that is completely different from the truth—an orchestrated reality that outwardly appears to show that everything is going well,” said the AGSH president.
This issue has also attracted the attention of the organization SciDev, part of Safe Journalist.
Blerjana Bino, Executive Director of SCIDEV and researcher of Safe Journalist Network considers this reality a serious concern.
“Election campaigns in Albania have been characterized by serious concerns about media independence and the quality of public information. Political parties have now normalized sidelining professional journalism and replaced it with PR or propaganda by offering ready-made audiovisual and textual materials, which are broadcast without any editorial intervention. This practice undermines the role of the media as a watchdog and limits its ability to provide critical and independent coverage of electoral activities. This practice denies citizens diverse, independent, or critical information. By excluding journalists from direct access to electoral events, political actors dominate and manipulate the narrative, denying the public the opportunity to receive impartial and in-depth reporting on the electoral process,” said Bino.
For the head of SciDev, an organization committed to improving the media environment in the country, this phenomenon not only harms the transparency of the electoral process but also erodes public trust in both the media and political parties.
“Thus, the media becomes a passive transmitter of political propaganda, rather than an active participant in fostering democratic debate. This phenomenon reduces the diversity of viewpoints and harms citizens’ ability to make informed decisions. To address this problem, stronger media ethics, the application of journalistic standards, and regulatory measures are needed to ensure media access to electoral events and its ability to independently verify and contextualize information,” concluded Bino.
In these circumstances, a hasty response might be: journalists should boycott the media, not broadcast the ready-made footage from the parties.
The reasons why this seemingly normal response doesn’t work are provided by the Balkan Network for Investigative Journalism (BIRN).
BIRN’s report on media ownership in Albania, published at the end of 2023, shows that audience and revenue in the Albanian media market continue to be controlled by a small group of family-owned companies.
“The four largest owners of free-to-air TV stations have a combined market share of 72.47%, which is considered a high-risk concentration. Only the two main owners in this segment have a joint market share of 58.27%,” the report states.
According to the Balkan Network for Investigative Journalism, “the high concentration of audience and revenue in the media market within a handful of family businesses has also made it easier for political groups, especially the government, to influence the media through indirect subsidies to businesses connected to media companies and direct connections between media owners and politicians.”
According to the study, 98.34% of the audience in the audiovisual media market is controlled by owners with political ties or those who have received direct or indirect subsidies from the state.
“Subsidies and government contracts are not limited to media; they also extend to non-media businesses owned by the media owners, further intertwining economic interests with editorial decisions,” BIRN said.
This situation has not changed and is not expected to change before the next elections, creating a discouraging context for independent media reporting on the electoral campaign, for coverage from multiple angles, for measuring the fulfillment of promises, or for deeper fact-checking of the election process.