Südosteuropa 60 (2012), H. 1, S. 31-52
Schwerpunkt: MeDIenLAnDSchAFten
BLENDI KAJSIU
The Instrumentalisation of Media in Albania
Abstract. The importance of the media for democracy is at least twofold; they provide a space for public deliberation, and they serve as a watchdog of accountability over the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. This paper argues that the media in Albania fail to perform these two functions due to their ownership and financing structure. The key print media outlets in Albania are owned by private individuals or businesses who use and finance them primarily to promote their own interests. Therefore, to a considerable degree, the media is reduced to functioning as an instrument of those who finance it. In his argument, the author also consid- ers the role of international actors and sponsors. The Albanian setting is contextualized on the basis of other European countries’ media landscapes, as to avoid any stereotypical placement of post-socialist (failed) democratisation.
Blendi Kajsiu recently earned a PhD in Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the Depart- ment of Government, University of Essex.
Introduction: Reframing the Perspective
The majority of research on the media in southeastern Europe falls into what can be broadly described as the transition paradigm.1 In very general terms this perspective views the media in the post-communist world as a phenomenon that is undergoing a transition from a medium of dictatorial regimes to a pillar of democratic politics. There are two interrelated premises to this paradigm. First, there is a teleological dimension according to which the media should eventually resemble the media in the West. From this perspective, the western media represent an ideal towards which the media in the formerly socialist
1 I would like to express my gratitude to the following persons for supporting me in writ- ing this paper: Remzi Lani, Director of the Albanian Media Institute, Henri Cili, Owner of the daily MAPO, Robert Rakipllari Editor in Chief of the daily Panorama, Andi Tela, Director of the daily Panorama, Alfred Peza, News Director in Vizion+ TV, Aleksander Cipa, Editor in Chief of the daily Shqip, Ardian Thano, Editor in Chief of the daily Shekulli. All of the above were kind enough to share their extensive knowledge of and experience in Albanian media with me in interviews. Naturally, the views expressed in this article are all mine. Finally, I would like to thank the three anonymous peer reviewers whose critique, comments and suggestions proved very useful. 32 Blendi Kajsiu
European states should gradually advance in order to contribute to democratic consolidation. This approach is perhaps best represented in the work of Peter Gross, according to whom “American and British media and their journalism, or rather the liberal democratic ideals on which they are based, [should be] the models against which all others should be measured”.2 In a similar fashion, other important authors have also analysed the media transformation from the transition perspective that implies a movement away from the communist model and towards the western one.3 This is part of a broader tendency, as Sparks and Reading have pointed out, to measure the media systems of the post-communist countries “against what is often termed the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model”.4 The second premise of the transition perspective towards the media in south- eastern Europe builds on a liberal approach that focuses primarily on the role of the media as a watchdog of government activity. According to Splichal, “in the classical liberal model of the media, their primary democratic role is defined in terms of a watch dog function; accordingly the media ought to control, and limit the power of state authorities”.5 From the liberal perspective the political role of the media is to protect individual freedom from the inherent authoritarian or totalitarian tendencies of those in power, or from the state in general. As Voltman has pointed out, “the normative justification of the political role of the media in Western Democra- cies […] have in common their aim to protect the objectives and interests of the individual vis-à-vis the state”.6 Hence, most of the reports on media developments in southeastern Europe originate from a liberal perspective that focused primarily on the degree to which media independence and freedom was threatened or guaranteed by the state and by the legal framework of the latter regarding media freedom.7
2 Peter Gross, Entangled Evolutions: Media and Democratization in Eastern Europe. Baltimore/MD, London 2002, 9. 3 See Karol Jakubowicz, Social and Media Change in Central and Eastern Europe: Frame- works of Analysis, in: David L. Paletz / Karol Jakubowicz (eds.), Business as Usual: Continuity and Change in Central and Eastern European Media. Cresskill/NJ 2003, 4-41. 4 Colin Sparks / Anna Reading, Communism, Capitalism and the Mass Media. London 1998, 175. 5 Slavko Splichal, Media Beyond Socialism: Theory and Practice in East-Central Europe. Boulder/CO 1994, 79. 6 Katrin Voltmer (ed.), Mass Media and Political Communication in New Democracies. London 2006, 5. 7 Thus, the 2011 Nations in Transit Report by Freedom House asked the following ques- tions, among others: 1. Are there legal protections for press freedom?; 2. Are journalists, especially investigative reporters, protected from victimization by powerful state or non-state The Instrumentalisation of Media in Albania 33
The transition paradigm on southeast European media has produced reports that appear like a long list of failures. They document the differences between the western liberal media ideal and the southeast European reality. While such an approach constantly tells us what is going wrong, it says little as to what is going on. In other words, such reports tell us what the media is not doing when compared to a given liberal ideal rather than how the media is actually func- tioning. Hence a different framework is needed, one which does not approach media developments from a perspective of failed democratisation. This is not to say that we should be less critical of media developments in the region, or that we should not have standards against which to measure them. However, it is important to change the perspective from one focusing on media freedom and plurality to one that tries to understand and assess the extent to which the media provides a space of undistorted communication that eventually serves to articulate and safeguard public interests. Unfortunately, liberal conceptions of the media largely ignore “a public interest that exists over and above the mere aggregation of particularistic interests”.8 Consequently, they ignore a critical approach to media developments from a public interest perspective, which is necessary in countries like Albania. When looking at the media developments in Albania, one is struck by the vast plurality of media outlets, as well as by the fact that most opposition media publish various criticisms against the govern- ment and constantly expose cases of abuse of power. Yet the extent to which the media in Albania serve the public interest, or the degree to which they provide an open and undistorted space for communication, is doubtful. Therefore, it is against the ideal of media that serve the public interest by pro- viding a forum for undistorted communication that I shall try to assess media developments in Albania. My understanding of public interest is not that of the aggregation of particular interests. Nor do I understand public interest to be something that results from the clash of numerous private interests. Rather, public interest above all is a normative ideal that refers to the common good as something that is above the sphere of particular interests. It seems appropriate to adopt a Habermasian approach that emphasizes undistorted communica- tion, and a public sphere where “collective will formation occurs through the medium of rational unconstrained communication”.9 From this perspective the actors?; 3. Does the state oppose onerous libel laws and other excessive legal penalties for “irresponsible” journalism?; 4. Are the media’s editorial independence and news-gathering functions free of interference from the government or private owners? See “Methodology”, in: Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2011, available at
10 Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Frankfurt/M. 1990, cited in Cohen, The Public Sphere, The Media and Civil Society (above fn. 9), 47. 11 Idem, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into A Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge 2005, 188f. The Instrumentalisation of Media in Albania 35 interests. Therefore, the Albanian media to a considerable degree have been transformed into instruments of publicity or advocacy for specific political and/ or business interests rather than a space of undistorted communication where a rational-critical debate can take place. Due to this process the Albanian media provide an increasingly distorted means of communication. They provide an agenda that reflects primarily the interests of their owners, with little interest for a number of social concerns, while often ignoring the public interest entirely. Under these circumstances the relationship of the media to public interest is fortuitous at best and hostile at worst.
The Media Scene in Albania
What is striking about the media in Albania is its proliferation, given the small size of the country’s population (some 3 million people). According to some estimates in 2010 there were approximately 200 newspapers and maga- zines in Albania.12 What is even more remarkable is that among these, 26 were daily newspapers, while the rest consisted of weekly, bi-weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines.13 The Albanian daily newspapers can be gener- ally divided into those supporting and those opposed to the ruling Democratic Party.14 Thus, some of the major daily papers such as Panorama are close to the Democratic Party, while others such as Shekulli are close to the opposing Socialist Party. Apart from their political affiliation, it is hard to distinguish the daily papers in terms of their readership or their social and ideological content. Although the major daily newspapers are not directly owned or controlled by political parties, it still is their position in the political sphere that defines them more than anything else. Therefore, the print media in Albania can be better categorised in relation to their political position vis-à-vis the major political ac- tors in the Albanian political scene than in terms of their ideological or social perspectives. What makes the large number of print media quite remarkable is not the diversity of views that are expressed by them, but their low circulation levels. Thus, in 2010 the total circulation of all daily newspapers in Albania combined was estimated to be at around 70,000 copies.15 The circulation of the largest daily paper for the same year was estimated at a little more than 20,000 copies.16 The majority of daily papers have a readership of no more than 1,000.
12 IREX, Albania Media Sustainability Index 2010, 4, available at
Under these circumstances the large number of daily papers is rather puzzling. In fact, it appears that the number of daily papers in Albania has slightly increased while the number of their general readership has fallen. There also seems to be a proliferation of electronic media. Besides the national public radio channels there were two national private radios and sixty-three private local radio stations in 2010.17 The number of private television stations has also increased rapidly since 1995 when the first private TV station, Shijak TV, began to broadcast. In 2010 there were three national television stations (one public and two private) that covered most of the Albanian territory, as well as 76 local analogue television stations, 75 cable television stations and two satel- lite TV stations.18 There have been few scientific studies on and measurements of TV audiences in Albania, which is why it is difficult to give an accurate description of audiences for various media outlets. However, as in the case of the print media, some TV stations, such as Klan TV, openly support the ruling Democratic Party government, while others, such as the largest national TV station Top Channel and another private TV station, Vizion+, tend to be close to the opposition Socialist Party. The large number of media outlets in Albania is also puzzling in view of the relatively small pool of advertisers, whose numbers cannot sufficiently sustain the whole media market. According to one study, the total amount spent on advertisement in Albania was estimated at 55 million euros for 2009-2010.19 Print media attracted only around 3-3.5 million euros in advertisement for the 2009-2010 time period, which was around six per cent of the total advertisement pool, and less than the ten per cent which it had attracted a year earlier. Given such a decline in revenues from advertisement, the large and even growing number of print media outlets is particularly odd. The eight largest TV Stations (Klan, Top Channel, Ora News, News 24, Koha, TVSH, Vizion+, and AS) in Albania received 81 per cent of the total advertisement market, which leaves very little for the numerous other TV stations. Yet, even the main media outlets cannot survive on advertisement revenue alone. Indeed, according to the National Council of Radio Television the share of revenues gained from advertisement fell from 58 % of the total revenue in 2009 to 30 % in 2010.20 Although about 75 % of the media officially declare some small profit, there are very few, if any, printed and electronic media that are profitable. In other words, the official financial reports of the media to the National Council on
17 Këshilli Kombëtar i Radios dhe Televizionit, Lista e operatoreve te licensuar, available at
Table 1: Albanian Media 2006-2009. Year 2006 2007 2008 2009 No. of dailies 25 24 23 26 No. of regional newspapers 4 4 4 5 No. of weeklies 13 15 13 15 No. of public TV channels 4 4 4 5 No. of public radio channels 5 5 5 5 No. of commercial TV stations 98 121 118 126 No. of commercial radio stations 45 54 56 60 Source: Thanas Goga, Footprint of Financial Crises in the Media: Albania Country Report, Open Society Institute, December 2009, 9, available at
Radio-Television (NCRT) are not credible at all, a fact that has been emphasised by a former head of NCRT.21 In fact, the representatives of one of the major media companies in Albania admitted in an interview that despite the fact that they had suffered losses for the last seven years, they still had declared a small profit.22 In short, the electronic, and especially the print media is not a profit- able business in Albania. Yet both the electronic and the print media sector in Albania have been growing rather than shrinking, as Table 1 shows. It is the paradox of a growing media market amongst falling media profits that needs to be explained in order to understand what is happening with the media in Albania.
The Ownership Structure: Media as an Instrument
In terms of ownership there have been three major periods in the post-com- munist history of the Albanian media. In the first period, roughly from 1991 to 1994, print media played an important role, as there was only one public televi- sion channel. In this period, the Albanian print media were affiliated with the political parties. The major newspapers at the time, Rilindja Demokratike and Zëri i Popullit, belonged to the Democratic and Socialist Parties, respectively. Between 1994 and 1998 Koha Jone [Our Time], which was owned and run by journalists, became the major daily newspaper in Albania. In a similar fashion other daily newspapers, and at times even TV stations such as Koha TV were owned and run by journalists. This constituted the second period of the Albanian media. The third period of media ownership began after 1998. This period is marked by the penetration of private capital into the media ownership, and it started
21 Ilva Tare, Shpërthimi i Kanaleve Televizive Private Në Shqipërinë Pas Komuniste, Polis 8 (2009), 20-34, 28, available at
23 Open Society Institute, Television Across Europe, Regulation, Policy and Independence: Albania. EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program (EUMAP): Network Media Program (NMP). Budapest 2005, 43, available at
The above phenomenon is widely recognised in Albania and is constantly confirmed by the majority of Albanian journalists and media experts. Thus, according to the panelists in the 2007 Media Index the number of media outlets in Albania continues to increase amidst falling revenue because “they are financially supported by businesses that establish these newspapers in order to use them as weapons for attacks or as shields to defend themselves”.28 In this sense, the media tends to serve the interests that financially support it rather than seek to enlarge its audience – either by safeguarding the public interest, or by covering key societal issues. This is not to say that the Albanian media never cares about the public interest, or that social issues and the public in general are completely ignored. There are of course “natural” limits to the degree to which the media can be effectively instrumentalised. A number of newspapers whose owners have benefited from their blatantly partisan politi- cal positioning have been penalized by their readers.29 As the editor-in-chief of Albania’s biggest daily newspaper put it in an interview, the media cannot be totally instrumentalised by the interests of its ownership, because otherwise it risks losing its readership.30 According to him, successful media “manage to combine the interests of the private ownership with the public interest”.31 However, it is clear that whenever there is a conflict between the private and public interests it is the former that will be supported by these media outlets. This is what another editor-in-chief of a major daily newspaper called “the censorship of interest”, which means that a story that is detrimental to the financial interests of the media owner will not be published.32 In other words, the interests of the business or businesses that finance the media constitute the limits of editorial independence.33 As the news director in a private TV station put it, “as long as you do not undermine the interest of the media owner you are free to write whatever you want”.34 However, part of the problem is that, as the same source pointed out, the interests of the media owners keep expanding.35 Because the media functions to serve specific interests that sustain it financially, it becomes an instrument through which economic and political interests try to legitimate themselves rather than a means for rational-critical debate that
28 IREX, Albania Media Sustainability Index 2006/2007, 12, available at
36 Fatos Lubonja, Mbi Mizerabilitetin e Mediave, Përpjekja, 16 October 2009, available at
The Politicisation of the Media
The instrumentalisation of the media in order to serve specific interests has reproduced – albeit in a new form – some old problems of the Albanian media, such as over-politicisation. As a consequence of the aforementioned political affiliations, both print media and electronic media focus almost exclusively on the debate between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, siding with one or the other. This has produced a situation in which political issues have overshadowed other important societal issues. While there is an extensive coverage of the political debates in the print media and the electronic media, with ample analysis of politicking, social issues that are ignored in the political debates between the two major parties, such as agriculture, get little coverage or are not discussed at all. The politicisation of the Albanian media results in an agenda that does not reflect important social realities and problems. For example, in a country where at least half of the population lives and works in rural areas, and where the agricultural sector constitutes at least 17 per cent of the GDP, there is very little coverage of agricultural topics in the Albanian print media.41 To exemplify this phenomenon, in Table 2 I have provided the headlines of the three main daily newspapers for the period of February 2011, a month that was less politically charged compared to all other months in the first half of 2011. One of the reasons why there is hardly any coverage of the rural sector in the Albanian print media is the fact that most newspapers are not distributed in the rural areas due to long-standing problems of the distribution system.42 This is only a partial explanation however, as agricultural issues or the problems of the rural areas also receive very little coverage by the major TV stations that do have widespread coverage. At present there are only two or three TV broadcasters which regularly cover rural issues, as opposed to at least a dozen broadcasters that focus almost exclusively on political debates.43 At first sight, there is nothing new in the currentpoliticisation of the Albanian media. The collapse of communism has produced a highly politicised media
40 Henri Cili, Owner of MAPO, Interview, Tirana, 3 September 2011. 41 Republika e Shqipërisë Instituti i Statistikës (INSTAT), Structure of Gross Domestic Production by Economic Activities, 1996-2006, available at
Table 2: Headlines of the Three Major Daily Newspapers for February, 2011. Daily Newspaper Number of Headlines Other Number of Headlines Focusing on Politics (Crime, etc.) Focusing on Rural Issues Panorama 23 5 0 Shekulli 20 8 0 Shqip 27 1 0 elsewhere in eastern Europe as well, with most papers being identified with certain political parties, “thus continuing the tradition of ‘advocacy press’ rather than performing a watchdog function”.44 However, what might seem as the same phenomenon has different causes and consequences. According to the director of the Albanian Media Institute, Remzi Lani, while the politicisation of the 1990s resulted from a clash of ideas, the current politicisation results from a clash of interests.45 Furthermore, while the politicisation of the media in the early 1990s reflected the politicisation of the Albanian society after the fall of communism, this is not necessarily true for the media’s current politicisation. The falling participation rates in Albanian elections since early the 1990s indi- cate that a growing number of Albanians does not support either of the major political parties. In this respect, today it is not the politicisation of society that feeds the politicisation of the media, but vice versa. This in turn means that it is not so much the media that shapes the agenda of politics, but politics that shapes the agenda of the media.46 The reason why the Albanian media follows the political process very closely while simultaneously neglecting a number of issues relates, to a large extent, to the above mentioned instrumentalisation of the media by the financial interests that sustain it. In the final analysis, the Albanian media serve to protect or expand the businesses that support it, since they are rarely profitable businesses. Given the general poverty of the Albanian economy, state funding in the form of gov- ernment contracts, tenders, permits, or licences, both at the central and the local level, become very important for the survival of many businesses. This is also partly due to the fact that the strategic – and often most profitable – sectors of the Albanian economy, such as the telecommunication and the banking sector, are already in the hand of foreign companies. This means that local businesses often have to compete for the spoils that central and local governments provide through the state budget, or for licences and permits to enter new economic sectors, such as private higher education. This in turn means that the success or failure of certain businesses is closely tied to the success or failure of certain politicians or political parties. Hence, politics becomes a priority for the me-
44 Splichal, Media Beyond Socialism (above fn. 5), 33. 45 Remzi Lani, Director, Albanian Media Institute, Interview, Tirana, 22 September 2011. 46 Ibid. The Instrumentalisation of Media in Albania 43 dia.47 Under these circumstances the distinction between politics, media and business becomes increasingly blurred. It is this phenomenon that produces an unhealthy obsession with politicking rather than politics. In other words, the media becomes an immediate participant in the power struggle between the major political actors.48 Besides the public interest in general, another victim of the politicisation of the media has been the general quality of journalism, as it has created what Lubonja has called “entrenched journalism”, i. e. journalism that produces news in order to safeguard and reinforce one’s own political position against the political position of other parties: “This situation has meant that gradually journalists have gotten used to becoming motivated in relation to the particular interest of one part (party) and not in rela- tion to the public interest. It is this kind of motivation that has lead our journal- ism towards half-truths that seek to undermine the half truths of the other party, producing instead a double lie.”49 This kind of journalism leads to constant attempts to manipulate or distort in- formation, or to subordinate it to one’s own political position. Therefore, rather than simply reporting the facts, the media often shape them in such a way as to have them fit better into their interrelated political and economic agendas.
Distorted Information: An Example
One consequence of the instrumentalisation of the media is that subtle dis- tortions of information can be found even in the most important and most respectable daily newspapers.50 This is reflected in the fact that the same piece of information appears differently in different media. Each media outlet em- phasises in its headlines those parts of the news that fit its political position and
47 A good example here is the case of businessmen such as Koco Kokedhima and his busi- ness and media groups. Mr. Kokedhima has for many years been closely associated with Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana and leader of the opposition Socialist Party. Consequently, his businesses have suffered from government reprisals,and many of his media outlets have been closed down following the heated conflict between the governing party and the opposition. 48 The interplay of a number of other factors has to be considered, yet is largely left aside here, such as the personal egos of media owners, their personal views on public issues, and so on. These factors account for a number of “deviations” from the pattern described above, such as conflicts between the media and the government that are not profitable for the owners at all. However, the above conclusion is valid in most cases, as no media outlet can survive in Albania unless it finds a political ally in the public sphere, or unless it serves the interests of whomever finances it. 49 Fatos Lubonja, Gazetar apo topçinj llogoresh?, Korrieri, 23 November 2009, available at
51 Robert Rakipllari, Editor in Chief of Panorama, Interview, Tirana, 6 September 2011. 52 Withers: Kriminelët që bëjnë ligjin në Parlamentin shqiptar, Panorama, 3 September 2011, 2. 53 Kabllogrami – Bombë: Gjashte Politikanët VIP të Lidhur me Krimin, Shekulli, 3 September, 2011, 1, available at
Finally, the headline of a smaller, but still important daily newspaper, Gazeta Shqiptare, on the same topic ran as follows: “Wikileaks on Nano: [With re- gard to his] Imprisonment, he accused the USA of conspiracy with Berisha”.56 Here, neither the new mayor of Tirana nor the leader of the opposition were mentioned. Instead, the newspaper focused on Fatos Nano, the former leader of the Socialist Party, who was equally disliked by the leadership of both the ruling Democratic Party and the Socialist Party. By doing so, Gazeta Shqiptare avoided confrontation with either of the two major parties. One reason for this was the fact that this newspaper, which for many years had been opposed to the Democratic Party, had recently been bought by a business group that sup- ported this party.57 Hence the paper was in the process of gradually changing its political position. In all the above-mentioned cases, the media were more interested in using the existing information to serve their specific purpose than in providing accurate information to the public. None of the media conducted further investigation into the information that was provided in the report by the US Ambassador. If they had, the public would probably have learned whether the accusations were true or not, as well as how far they went.58 Instead, each of the newspa- pers that we analyzed was eager to instrumentalise the information to fit its own agenda. Therefore, there was a distortion in the public information that resulted from the combined pressure of the readership on the one hand as well as media interests on the other. The media could not afford to ignore the secret report by the US Ambassador, which had been made public by Wikileaks, but it was published with headlines that were carefully tailored to fit the interests of particular media outlets.
56 Wikileaks për Nanon: Burgu, akuzoi SHBA për komplot me Berishën, Gazeta Shqiptare, 3 September 2011, 1. 57 On May 2011, Gazeta Shqiptare, the TV station News24, and Radio Rash were bought by the business group “Focus, Shpk”. The two businessmen that formed this group were Irfan Hysenbelliu, owner of the major daily newspaper Panorama, and Artan Santo, owner of Cre- dins Bank. Both businessmen were known for their connection with the ruling coalition of the Democratic Party (DP) and the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI) that came to power in 2009. This purchase caused a lot of public debate and criticism by the Socialist Party, who saw the purchase as the end of two important opposition media outlets. See: Familja Meta- Berisha po blejnë News24, Gazeta Shqiptare dhe Radio Rash, Tema, 7 May 2011, available at
Fragmented Pluralism
One of the positive aspects of Albanian media, as already mentioned, is its plurality. The predominance of private and business interest in the Albanian media results in a constant proliferation of media products through which com- panies aim to protect or to promote themselves, which is important given the dysfunctional or arbitrary nature of many Albanian institutions (such as weak property rights, an inefficient judicial system, and arbitrary tax collection). The result is a plurality of views that are expressed in the Albanian media. Such plu- rality, in turn, guarantees that there is little media censorship. As Lubonja argues, “the only space within the [Albanian] media regime for articulating some truth is is created by the conflicting interests of different media owners who are connected with different political parties, despite the fact that they function within the same system where many truths that go against the interests of both parties are not told to the public”.59 Thus, it is impossible to cover up scandals, and various corruption scandals involving government officials from the lowest to the highest levels are exposed in the media on a nearly daily basis. In short, the Albanian media in general does perform its watchdog function, insofar as it constantly exposes abuses of power and corruption scandals at every level of governance. The main problem is that this watchdog function is undermined not so much by government repression (although that is not absent), but by the instrumen- talisation of the media. This means that scandals, corruption affairs or abuses of power are exposed only in so far as they serve the interests of a given media ownership. In some cases, media outlets expose the corrupt behaviour of poli- ticians they oppose while they simultaneously cover up or ignore the corrupt behaviour of officials they support. In other cases a given media outlet might pursue a certain scandal only as long as its ownership receives a benefit from those in power. The consequence of this is a fragmented pluralism, in which every media outlet pursues its own scandals while ignoring the scandals ex- posed by others. This way, the various scandals tend to cancel out, rather than reinforce, each other. As the director of the major daily Panorama has pointed out, “each media outlet is an island, which follows its own agenda”.60 A good example is the Law on the Integrated Management of Waste that the Albanian Parliament passed on 22 September 2011, which allowed the import of waste materials to Albania.61 The law was strongly opposed by a number
59 Lubonja, Mbi Mizerabilitetin e Mediave (above fn. 36). 60 Andi Tela, Director, Panorama, Interview, 26 September 2011. 61 See Luis Tanushi, Denis Dedej, Miratohet Ligji: Shqiperia Lejon Importin e Plehrave, Shekulli, 23 September 2011, avaialable at
Table 3: Headlines of Three Major Daily Newspapers. News- Date 24 Sep 2011 26 Sep 2011 27 Sep 2011 04 Oct 2011 paper Panorama First Ten Points: Reparation: The Trial Today: Internal De- Headline Rama: PS Pro- The persecuted Arjan Selimi was bates: Appoint- poses a Pact for ready 15 thou- executed with five ments, Demi Albania sand new files bullets against the main MPs of DP Second Ervin starts Spartak Ngjela: Ngjela’s Debate The Court of Headline adventure with I confess what with prime Appeals annuls Nocen of Big happened at minister Shehu the prison sen- Brother the wedding of in 1972 tence for Aldo Mehmet Shehu’s Bare son Shekulli First Prifti: I will The assets of the Arjan Selimi has In the hell of Headline publish a video judges in the been executed Sharra: Investi- with Fahri Balliu electoral college gation of waste treatment Second Waste Import, The waste of The Italian Court of Ap- Headline what is happen- Naples, the project: 6 peals drops life ing in Romania ships every Albanian cities sentence for and what Alba- week in the where there will Aldo Bare nia will suffer harbour, with be waste treat- tomorrow secret destina- ment plants tion, can arouse the population Shqip First Rama places ten “Konomi”, Day of Crime! Berisha waits Headline conditions for punishment for Kills pregnant for the Congress Berisha fake owners wife and him- of SP self. Father kills son, 28 year old Second Officials steal 15 AK: Tear apart Arjan Selimi, The Prosecutor’s Headline times more than the census page the husband of Office has seized thieves on ethnicity, it is Enis Gjoni, was the property file legal to do so executed on Hamallaj of local environmentalist activists and experts, as well as by the major daily Shekulli. The newspaper provided numerous reports on the potential danger of the importation of waste materials from neighbouring countries such as Italy, especially given the involvement of the Italian mafia in this business.62 Although Shekulli covered this issue for weeks, none of the other major daily newspapers picked up the topic. Instead, they focused on a number of unrelated issues. This resulted in comparatively little discussion of and attention to the issue of the importation of waste materials. In Table 3, I have presented the headlines of the three major Albanian daily papers, in order of importance, during the
62 Plehrat e Napolit, anijet cdo jave neper porte, destinacioni secret, mund te ndezin popul- laten pritese, Shekulli, 26 September 2011, 1. 48 Blendi Kajsiu same period. The headlines dealing with the issue of waste importation have been underlined. As the above table shows, only Shekulli pursued the issue of waste importa- tion, which was ignored by the other two dailies, despite being an issue of major public concern. One could find numerous other examples in which a scandal or a major issue has been picked up extensively by one media outlet, while it was completely ignored by the other newspapers. This produces what I have labelled above as “fragmented pluralism”, which means that there is a plurality of issues that often cancel out, rather than reinforce, each other.63 The focus of a given media outlet on a specific issue or scandal is not neces- sarily determined by its significance to the public interest, but by the effects of that issue for its ownership. This does not mean that none of the Albanian media focus on issues of public interest, but rather that this takes place mainly when the specific interests of the media ownership and the general public interest hap- pen to coincide. This is the reason why research on Albanian media has found that the Albanian readership is very sceptical regarding the aims of the media. Research using focus group analyses have found that readers thought that “there is clearly a biased coverage of events and reports by the majority of media outlets, with editorial decisions being taken depending on specific political or business allegiances”.64 Consequently, “the reader asks the question why, not what, has been published”.65 One of the most immediate consequences of Albania’s fragmented media pluralism is that it undermines the efficiency, credibility and the impact of the media. A joint, even if opinionated reaction to a given issue of public interest would have a larger impact on the decision-making process than the fragmented and discordant reactions of individual media outlets. Therefore, the problem that the Albanian media faces today is not that issues, problems, or scandals are hidden from the public view. Instead, the instrumentalisation of the media, and
63 Table 3 provides a visual example of the fragmented pluralism. Not only did the other newspapers fail to pick up on the issue of waste imports and treatment, despite the importance of the issue for urban and rural areas in Albania, but we also see that most of the time the media covered very different and unrelated issues. The only time when the leading newspa- pers focus on the same issues is in relation to major events of crime or politics. In Table 3, I have put those headlines that focus on the same issue in italics. As the table shows, the only time when all three newspapers focused on the same issue was on 27 September 2011, when Arjan Selimi, accused of heading a criminal group, was shot dead. There is also a joint focus of Panorama and Shqip on 24 September 2011 about political issues that involved the leader of the opposition Edi Rama and the Prime Minister Berisha, as well as between Panorama and Shekulli on 4 October 2011 about the annulment of the prison term for Aldo Bare. 64 Thanas Goga, Footprint of Financial Crises in the Media: Albania Country Report, Open Society Institute, December 2009, 4, available at
The Paradox of Media Investment: Survival before Public Interest
The instrumentalisation of the media in Albania has produced a paradoxical situation in which there is a huge investment in the media sector in general, but not enough investment in the individual media outlets. On the one hand, a huge amount of money has been invested in the media sector, which has produced a number of media outlets that is far greater than what a functioning and competitive media market could sustain in Albania. This has led to a grow- ing demand for journalists. According to an estimate by the Albanian Union of Journalists, there were 5,000 journalists in Albania in 2005.66 It is worth noting that the number of media outlets in Albania has increased during the period of 2006-2009, which means that today the number of journalists is probably even higher. However, while the total investment in the media sector and the total number of journalists is very high, almost no individual media outlet has enough finan- cial and human resources to perform at a professional journalistic level, which would include investigative reporting, the coverage of social issues, and so on. In other words, while the total investment in Albanian media by private owners is quite substantial, investment into individual media outlets is insufficient. In order to illustrate this situation, it is sufficientto have a quick look at the number of journalists working for each of the three major daily newspapers in relation to the number of pages that they produce. See Table 4 below. The lack of sufficient financial and human resources is connected to the fact that the ultimate goal of most Albanian media outlets is not to produce profes- sional journalism, but to safeguard the business interests that finance them. This means that a certain level of journalistic professionalism is necessary only insofar as it has to attract enough readers for the media to create a public impact that can be eventually useful to said business interests. Companies and their owners have no interest in financing individual media outlets beyond this limit in order to improve their journalistic standards. As we have already emphasized, the owners’ profits do not result from the revenues generated by media outlets as
66 Albanian Center for Media Monitoring, Labor Protection and Social Security of Journal- ists and Media Employees, a Necessity for a Free Media (2006), 1. 50 Blendi Kajsiu
Table 4: The Number of Journalists Working at the Headquarters of Three Major Dailies in Albania. Newspaper Number of journalists Number of pages working at the headquarters Panorama 30 24 Shekulli 24 24 Shqip 20 32 Source: Editors-in-Chief of Panorama, Shekulli and Shqip. such, but from their use to promote the owners’ interests, as the vast majority, if not all of the Albanian media, operate at a loss. Their precarious financial situation undermines the independence of the me- dia as a whole and of the Albanian journalists in particular. Given the limited pool of advertisement in Albania, this means that key business figures, who advertise in the media, have become very valuable. The advertising revenue that is provided by the government also remains important, even though less so than in the 1990s. As the owner of a national TV station declared in an in- terview in 2008, “media owners have used their TV channels to support the government, in order to collect as much government advertising as possible, which has been the major source of revenue for television stations”.67 The same owner even admitted that his TV stations might have sometimes done the same.68 This means that the influence of the government, through the funding of advertisement, remains important in the media, even though it is no longer the biggest source of advertising revenue. Other major business groups, such as the telecommunications companies, have become the most important sources of advertising revenue for the media. According to one estimate, in 2010 these companies spent about 17 million euros on advertisement in Albania, 60 to 70 per cent of which went to TV stations.69 Albanian media therefore became financially dependent upon the telecommunications companies. One result of this dependency was that pro- tests organized by Albanian civil society organisations in 2006 against the very high tariffs charged by the telecommunications companies were not covered by most media outlets.70 Nor did the media provide any significant coverage
67 Interview with Aleksander Frangaj owner of TV Klan, cited in Tare, Shpërthimi i Kana- leve Televizive Private (above fn. 21), 26. 68 Ibid., 26. 69 Albanian Media Institute, Media dhë Shoqëria e Informacionit ne Shqipëri (above fn. 13), 32. 70 Genci Çobani, Tarifat në Shqipëri, dy herë më të larta së në Britaninë e Madhe. Gazeta Ballkan, 26 May 2006. The Instrumentalisation of Media in Albania 51 on the investigation undertaken by an Albanian Parliamentary Committee on the high tariffs of two telecommunications companies,AMC and Vodafone, that operate in Albania. According to a report by the Albanian Media Institute, “even though this [investigation on prices charged by the telecommunications companies] was a clear case of something that concerned the public interest, there were few reports on this issue and after a while they were completely eliminated by the media itself”.71 The above mentioned precarious financial state of the Albanian media puts Albanian journalists in a very difficult financial position, which undermines their independence. The Albanian media sector is marked by a very high level of informality, job insecurity, and mobility. In a 2008 report on labour relations in the Albanian media, only nine out of 72 journalists interviewed declared that they had a labour contract.72 This finding is supported by earlier research conducted by the Albanian Union of journalists, whose survey of some 120 jour- nalists throughout Albania in 2005 concluded that about 95 % of journalists in Albania did not have a labour contract and/or proper healthcare and social ben- efits.73 A 2008 report on labour relations in the Albanian media concluded that “journalists find themselves working long hours and suffering from low salaries and violations of several of the rights they are entitled to. In these conditions, journalists are in no position to choose professional integrity over a media owner’s editorial line.”74 It should come as no surprise that the same report found that all the editors- in-chief interviewed had adjusted their work in accordance with the interest of the media owners either with or without the direct intervention of the latter.75 Under these circumstances, the public interest is pushed into the background, as both the media outlets and the journalists are more concerned with their own economic survival and with the need to satisfy the demands of the media owners first.
71 Albanian Media Institute, Media dhë Shoqëria e Informacionit ne Shqipëri (above fn. 13), 32. 72 Ilda Londo, Albania, in: South East European Network for the Professionalization of the Media (SEENPM), Labour Relations and the Media: Analyzing Patterns of Labor Relations in the Media of SEENMP Member Countries. Chisinau 2008, 77, available at
In this paper I have analyzed the developments and challenges of the Alba- nian media by moving beyond the liberal and transition perspectives, which focus almost exclusively on the freedom of the media from state repression and upon media plurality. This is not to say that the Albanian media is free of governmental repression. There are still instances when the Albanian govern- ment tries to penalise critical media outlets through fines or through other measures.76 Today, however, there is far less direct confrontation between the state and the media as compared to the 1990s. Their relationship is now mediated by financial capital, i. e. the businesses that finance the media. The multitude of daily newspapers, radio and TV stations as well as the diversity of the financial interests that sustain them means that it is difficult to censor news in Albania. There are hardly any corruption scandals or cases of abuse of power, at any level of government, that have not been brought out into the open by the media. From this perspective it is impossible to argue that the Albanian media has not performed its watchdog function vis-à-vis political power. The problem with the Albanian media is that it functions not so much as a watchdog for the public interest, but rather for those specific business and political interests that sustain it. Little is left unexposed, but what is exposed often gets lost in the general background noise of a multitude of unrelated stories, or it is ignored as it is perceived as an individual rather than a public concern. Therefore, in order to understand media developments and challenges in Albania today, it is important to unravel the complex relationship between politics, businesses and the media. As an expert of Albanian and South East European media has pointed out, “the close, and often deformed, relations between the media, politics and the busi- ness sector have damaged both media independence and media professionalism. Media repoliticization and media clientelism are currently among the most serious problems that the media face.”77
76 For example, the government fined the largest private Albanian TV station, Top Chan- nel, a media outlet critical of the government, with 12 million euros for tax evasion in 2007. In January 2009, the government removed the private daily newspaper Tema from a public building that the latter had leased. This action took place right after the newspaper started uncover and to criticize cases of government corruption. 77 Remzi Lani, Balkan Media: Lost in Transition, in: UNESCO, Professional Journalism and Self-Regulation: New Media Old Dilemmas in South East Europe and Turkey. Paris 2011, 41, available at