TIRANA, April 25 – The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) annual index for press freedom assessed that “hatred for journalism is threatening democracies” and, referring to a March 2018 report, also found many problems with Albanian media.
The report, published by RSF and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), stated that “regulatory standards are manipulated in the government’s interests and ownership of the broadcast media is concentrated in the hands of a few big businessmen.”
In terms of progress Albania was ranked one place higher this year, now positioned 75th in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index.
However, the RSF confirms that lack of regulatory standards and concentrated media ownership have created an environment of wide-spread self-censorship, while 80% of journalists are not confident on their professional future and career.
“Those who continue to work as journalists are exposed to a climate of insults, some of them coming from Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has called journalists ‘trash,’ ‘poison,’ and ‘public enemies,’” the RSF stated for Albania.
The comments on Albania fit in the wider context of the media’s decreasing role in the democratic process, due to political leaders’ hostility towards journalists’ work.
The report, evaluating press freedom among 180 countries in the world, highlighted that leaders’ hostility towards journalists is not only happening in authoritarian states like Turkey, which had dropped in ranking, or Egypt, where ‘fearing the media’ has become such routine journalists are constantly blamed for terrorism and jailed arbitrarily.
“Increasingly more, democratically elected leaders are not regarding the media as a fundamental support of democracy, but rather as an opponent against whom they openly express hatred,” the report states.
According to the report, Norway remains first in ranking as the country with highest media freedom, while North Korea is last.
Europe, widely considered the continent with the highest safety regarding media and journalists, also marked significant deescalation this year. Four out of five countries with the biggest decrease in media freedom are part of Europe: Malta, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Slovakia.
