The Doshi affair must be fully investigated, but it must not serve as a distraction so political leaders can forget about problems affecting the country’s residents on a daily basis: unemployment, poverty and quality of public services.
It is a worrying sign for Albania that there appears to be a permanent crisis-mode political discourse featured in media coverage and daily conversations.
The past two weeks in particular have seen the level of political drama increased to the highest levels in two years, as the Tom Doshi affair has dominated the headlines. (Please see our news coverage for more on this issue.)
It is a story of political intrigue and alleged murder for hire — of a mixture of money, crime and politics, and thus naturally one that attracts attention.
Investigators have now interviewed tens of people in the case. No new evidence has been made public in the past week, and the key witness has changed his story. All others allegedly involved in the plot have denied the allegations, based on reporting and leaks made public in the local media.
It is unlikely that anything will come out of the current political furor other than make Albanians even more aware about the quality of the makeup of the Albanian parliament.
But there are some immediate winners out of this mess. The accusations have been a boost for the political class in general and for media outlets looking for eyeballs at all costs.
It is as if the politicians are afraid the attention of the people is shifting away from their daily press conferences, media appearances and talk shows, and into the country’s real problems — poverty, unemployment and the quality of public services.
Politicians, the media and all other public actors have a responsibility to serve for the betterment of the societies in which they live. The bar is set high for them, because they are in positions of leadership. They need to lead a discourse that is both ethical and civil. Albanian politicians need to overcome the urge to seek the lowest denominator in the message they offer the public. The political discourse does not have to be negative and hateful — hope and inspiration work much better.
This is also a story of the Albanian media as much as it is one of Albanian politics. In modern societies, the media is meant to play a role as a fourth center of power working in the public interest.
Unfortunately for Albania, reporting has often taken a backseat to transmitting everything politicians say, copy-paste, no questioning and no independent research required. The spin only comes when what the politician is saying does not fit the political and commercial interests of the media owners.
The proliferation of tens of media — primarily television stations and online media outlets — has not contributed to an increase in the quality of the coverage in Albania, but rather to a decrease. Experienced journalists have been spread thin, and staffs cut to the bone, leading to a decrease in quality. In addition, this proliferation has created an echo chamber that copies and amplifies unverified stories and makes it easier to drown out critical, fact-based reporting.
Political domination of the media is not solely an Albanian problem, of course. It is a regional one. In neighboring Macedonia and Serbia similar political and commercial interests are taken to an even more extreme level than they are in this country. But then we would like this country to be compared with the best the continent has to offer, not the worst.
At the end of the day, prosecutors must do their job to find out whether there is any truth to Doshi’s allegations, but political leaders must not forget the real problems of the country they are meant to address. The unemployed, the poor and those in dire need of state services will certainly not forget.
