BACKGROUND

Ruled by one of the most totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe until 1990, Albania has had little tradition of a free and independent press in the last century. Under communism the establishment and operation of media outlets was entirely controlled by the party-state, which used them as tools of indoctrination. The fall of the regime triggered the proliferation of a large and diverse range of newspapers and other periodicals, followed in the second part of the 1990s by the gradual establishment of a private radio and television industry that ended the decade-long monopoly of the state-run Albanian Radio-Television. Albania currently has thirteen daily newspapers, three television stations with close to national coverage, as well as dozens of small circulation periodicals and local radio and television stations.¹

The newly established newspapers, some of which started as and continue to be official outlets of political parties, became important contributors to political and public debate in the early 1990s. However, a series of factors-such as a lack of proper training and the political polarization during most of the last decade-have thwarted the development of professional, objective, and investigative journalism. A highly rhetorical and biased press has disenchanted readers and led to shrunken circulation numbers over the last several years. A voluntary code of ethics adopted by the major journalist associations is rarely enforced. In addition, the print media struggles with low subscription rates, high production costs, and a poor distribution system that is unable to serve large parts of the country.² Such financial burdens make newspapers even less fit to compete with the expanding network of electronic media, which is increasingly the dominant source of news for a majority of Albanians.

Politics and the attitudes of successive governments have done little to support the development of Albanian media. When the opposition Democratic Party (DP) came to power in 1992, it squandered the opportunity to start a tradition of government non-interference with media freedoms. On the contrary, the DP government became increasingly repressive of the press. In 1993 it passed a punitive press law³ and used it, on the pretext of curbing unprofessional journalism, to imprison critical reporters and political rivals. Between 1994 and 1997 several journalists were arbitrarily detained, while others were prosecuted and convicted for dissemination of "state secrets" or defamation of government officials. Dozens of journalists and publishers suffered violent assaults by never-identified attackers, usually in apparent retaliation for articles critical of the government. In 1997 the premises of Koha Jonë [Our Time], at the time Albania's biggest-circulation daily, were completely burnt down by unknown perpetrators. No one was identified or prosecuted by the authorities in connection with those attacks. The Albanian Telegraphic Agency (the national wire service) and the public television were systematically biased in favor of the government.⁴

The Socialist Party (SP) government that took over in 1997, following months of civil unrest triggered by the massive collapse of fraudulent investment schemes, pledged to refrain from clamping down on the critical media. Shortly after taking office, the SP-dominated parliament repealed most of the 1993 press law, except for its opening clause: "The press is free. Freedom of the press is protected by law." The amendment was followed by a certain improvement in the general attitude of the government toward media freedoms. News coverage by the public television gradually became more balanced, although not completely equidistant from the two main political poles. At the same time, however, a major controversy emerged over the regulation of private radio and television stations, which had mushroomed in a legal vacuum. The National Council of Radio and Television (NCRT), a regulatory authority set up and appointed by parliament, decided to make available only two national (coverage) licenses for private television stations and to grant the licenses through a competitive process. The opposition complained-with some justification-that the licensing of only two national stations was unnecessarily restrictive and that the licensees were biased in favor of the SP-led governing coalition. The NCRT has yet to research a thorough frequency plan, which would enable better informed decisions about spectrum capacity.

Human Rights Watch research reveals that serious media freedom violations still occur in Albania. Journalists-primarily but not exclusively from the opposition media-continue to be intimidated, arbitrarily detained, and physically attacked by the police and criminals with powerful ties. Such attacks take place both openly and in secrecy, and go largely unpunished. Albanian journalists are no longer thrown into jail in massive numbers, but they continue to be prosecuted, convicted, and punished with hefty fines for criticism of politicians and government officials. The judicial system routinely fails to protect journalists' nationally and internationally guaranteed rights, not to mention the interest of the Albanian public to be informed on issues of great public interest. More sophisticated, but no less insidious, forms of government interference with media freedoms and independence are also at work. Through extensive abuse of the financial leverage it holds over the press-via state advertising and other means-the government meddles with the editorial policies of media outlets, and retaliates against criticism.

In recent years Albanian journalists have been increasingly targeted because of their efforts to expose the country's rampant official corruption. The rise in violent attacks and defamation actions against the press by state officials accused of corruption appears also to coincide with an increased maturity, courage, and investigative capacity of the Albanian media in general. At the same time that Albanian journalism seems to be entering a new stage of development, it will have to reassert its freedom and independence in the face of improper government interference.

1 Albanian Media Institute, Monitoring Albanian Media Landscape (Tirana 2001). For a list of Albanian news dailies, their respective affiliation, and circulation numbers, see Appendix A.

2 United Nations Development Programme, Albanian Human Development Report 1998, p. 69; available on the World Wide Web at http://www.undp.org.al/publications.htm.

3 Law on the Press (no. 7756) of October 11, 1993.

4 For a detailed account of violations of media freedoms in Albania between 1992 and 1996, see Human Rights Watch, Human Rights in Post-Communist Albania (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996), pp. 64-92.