In this article
Covert recording and the debate over ethics
In the year just past, the world learned of what was called the “Phone-Hacking Scandal”; the “Rupert Murdoch Scandal”, in which one of the most powerful figures in world media, associated with News of the World, became the focus of accusations of flagrant ethical breaches, bribing numerous police officers and misusing freedom of expression, because of illegal interception used as an investigative tool. For Albanians, the Murdoch scandal revived discussion of the much-debated Pango scandal.
It was on 4 March 2009 that one of the television stations with the country’s largest audiences broadcast, through its programme “Fiks-Fare,” a video that would lead to the dismissal of Ylli Pango, then Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, and open a debate that seemed unlikely to fade easily. And it did not fade easily: the case went to court, and a ruling by the Tirana Judicial District Court required Top Channel to pay Ylli Pango 400 thousand euros in compensation for the moral and material damage caused by the outlet. According to Reporters Without Borders, this ruling was unacceptable, infringed freedom of expression and seriously violated media freedom in Albania.
But in my view, following the logic that led to the closure of the newspaper News of the World, which first appeared as far back as 1843, the court’s decision was fair and, I would even say, lenient. Fiks-Fare has the same format as the Italian programmes “Striscia la Notizia” or “Le Iene”, which expose social problems, injustices and flagrant abuses. Unlike the Italian programmes, however, Fiks-Fare generally concerns itself with individuals rather than the problems themselves. In my view, this programme’s sole purpose in Albania is the public denigration of people “summoned” into cases as defendants and invariably declared guilty.
Perhaps this is done to blackmail them, to gain something from them; perhaps not. I do not know. But I do know that, unlike the Italian programmes, when Fiks-Fare broadcasts covert video recordings, it does not obscure the faces of the people it records illegally. So, as I said before, it does not fight the problem (corruption, to take one example), but individuals.
To me, this is a very clear abuse of freedom of expression.
Trial by media
Also last year, news of the arrest of the world’s foremost banker, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, made headlines around the world. The head of the IMF was accused of trying to rape a hotel maid in New York. What every media outlet in the world published was simply an objective account of the event and of what would happen next.
No one took it upon themselves to judge or convict Strauss-Kahn ahead of a court ruling.
The same happened in his case in Albania. Our (hypocritical) media did not treat him as they usually treat people. Perhaps because he was a foreigner, or perhaps because he was Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
In Albania, it has become customary for the media to declare one person guilty and another innocent before the courts do so. There are endless examples to mention, from people who are suspects for the police when arrested but “criminals,” “murderers” and “drug traffickers” for the media, all the way to politics, which the media always describe as corrupt, but only in words, without facts or court rulings, while its individual figures never have their reputations stained. To me, this behaviour, too, is a complete misuse of freedom of expression.
Broadcasting images of violence
There were many events last year, but the one I would single out in terms of media coverage is the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. In many countries around the world, videos of his killing were never published, or, when they were published, they were censored to uphold ethical standards and avoid shocking the public. Our (hypocritical) media did the same: in such cases they act like professional media, and they broadcast a shortened, censored version of the video.
I keep saying hypocritical because our media do not behave this way when it comes to events or issues in our own country. Quite the opposite. In the case of the events of 21 January, footage of one of the protesters being killed was broadcast, and the next day every newspaper led with beaten, bloodied protesters: macabre images. What happened to our media’s professionalism?!
To me, and I continue to say it, this is a misuse of freedom of expression: in their pursuit of the sensational side, they give no thought at all to the shock or the consequences for public opinion. The same thing happens all the time, even with ordinary accidents or various killings, when images of corpses are broadcast without the slightest concern.
What I wanted to say through these examples is that in Albania, freedom of expression is misused just as insistently as respect for it is demanded: through slander, through a lack of professionalism, or of seriousness in covering the events and issues that interest our media.