Albania, media trapped in a triangle of pressure

Journalists across Europe are often subjected to subtle forms of pressure and intimidation, including vexatious lawsuits frequently initiated by influential politicians or businesspeople. Blerjana Bino, Executive Director of SCiDEV and Researcher at the SafeJournalists Network, provides insight into the situation in the country

What do you consider the main challenges faced by journalists in Albania? 

Journalists work in an environment that does not enable them to produce quality journalism in the public interest. This is primarily due to the set-up of the media ecosystem, where institutional actors, politicians, powerful economic individuals, and groups have a huge influence on the sector. There is this triangle between the media, politics, and businesses that exploit media outlets to advance vested interests rather than promote democratic development and informed citizenry.  

Journalists also face precarious working conditions and poor social and economic security due to the lack of basic safeguards, such as proper implementation of the Labour Code, collective agreement, or a strong union capable of supporting them. Added to this, there are critical issues on the rule of law, which also relate to attacks against journalists and impunity. Even though the number of physical or life-threatening attacks is limited, there are a lot of cases of pressure, intimidation, harassment, and other type of threats, including legal ones. 

Do you see any difference between the local and the national level? 

Journalists working at the local level, particularly young ones, face more challenges than their colleagues based in Tirana, especially when it comes to enforcing labour rights and employment contracts. There are cases of reporters who didn’t receive their salaries for almost two years despite continuing to work regularly.  

Moreover, local communities are usually quite small, where everybody knows everybody, so journalists are more vulnerable to threats. If they try to write an investigative story regarding the municipality, a private business or any other authority, for example, they will be easily identifiable and will likely start receiving calls asking them to remove or change the story. Unfortunately, this has become the norm also at the central level: journalists who cover political affairs are often requested to modify or change the title or some parts of their article. This type of intimidation leads many journalists to self-censor.  

What about women journalists? Are they somehow more exposed to security issues? 

Several interviews, focus groups, and roundtable discussions that we have organised demonstrate that sexual harassment is a key problem for women journalists across the sector, as most media outlets do not have policies or procedures to address it. What is worse is that this phenomenon is underreported: because there is little trust in the institutions to deal with this issue, women journalists fear that reporting such cases would jeopardise their careers, which is why they tend not to report them.  

Other challenges include smear campaigns, digital attacks, and disinformation. This year, several prominent women journalists, activists, and public figures became the targets of disinformation campaigns, inflammatory language, and hate speech.  

Furthermore, working conditions remain unstable. Salaries are often only partially declared, with the majority paid in cash. This informality poses significant challenges for accessing social security benefits. For example, when an individual takes maternity leave, their payment is minimal because it is calculated based on the officially declared earnings. This practice of underreporting wages directly impacts social welfare benefits, disproportionately affecting women. 

The number of legal threats, known as SLAPPs, is increasing across Europe. Is this also happening in Albania? What factors enable these threats in the country? 

Most legal threats are related to defamation, which is still regulated by the criminal code. The main perpetrators are usually businessmen, shareholders, or individuals with strong connections to particular businesses. Politicians are another main group that has filed defamation lawsuits against journalists, activists, and civic watchdogs.  

At SCiDEV, we follow this topic closely. In particular, we advocate for the complete decriminalization of defamation and the harmonization of national legislation with the EU anti-SLAPP directive and the Council of Europe's recommendation. 

How does the judiciary address legal threats? 

We had a huge reform and vetting process in the judiciary, which brought both positive and negative consequences. One negative is that, due to the many prosecutors and judges who were fired, a small number of people are dealing with a large number of cases, and this has created a backlog and a delay in processing lawsuits against journalists. While in some cases this delay is understandable, in other cases, it appears to be deliberate.  

Some judges are very well-trained and sensitive to cases against journalists and public watchdogs. They tend to adhere to the European Court of Human Rights standards and align with European freedom of speech standards, so they tend to protect journalists and public watchdogs in SLAPP cases.  

Yet, we need more capacity building, training, and awareness raising, especially for those judges and prosecutors who took office after the vetting process and for new judges and prosecutors. 

You have mentioned the EU anti-SLAPP directive and the Council of Europe’s recommendations to counter SLAPPs. Is the Albanian legal framework aligned with these norms? How is the process of legal harmonisation proceeding? 

The harmonisation with the EU directive will require substantial changes in both criminal and civil procedure codes.  

Early in October, we had a roundtable with the Ministry of Justice representatives, who expressed their commitment to start the process immediately and be ready by June 2027. This ambitious plan will require a thorough assessment of gaps and broader engagement and consultations with all media sector and civil society stakeholders. Monitoring and evaluating the new mechanism will be essential to assessing potential unintended consequences.  

One of the key changes will be the full decriminalisation of defamation. We also advocate for a change in the criminal code to provide specific protection to journalists when they are attacked because of their duty – similar to what happens with other professionals working for the public interest such as doctors, the police, or teachers.  

The European accession process provides leverage for media freedom organisations to put pressure on the government. At the same time, we need to make sure that this process is not only formal, but also inclusive, transparent, and transformative to the benefit of media freedom and journalists’ safety. Of course, this will require not only strong institutional commitment but also the political will and the proactive engagement of civil society and the media community to steer the process in the right direction.   

The connection with European networks and CSOs is also important: our experience shows that the government and other institutions tend to react more to our work when we join forces with European and international actors.  

You have recently published a new working paper on Albania’s level of preparedness on the alignment with the EU anti-SLAPP directive. Can you give us an insight of the key takeaways and recommendations? 

This working document is an initial assessment of Albania’s gaps in relation to the newly adopted EU directive. We also provide some recommendations not only on potential changes to the criminal and civil codes but also on how to make the harmonisation process truly inclusive and transparent.  

We call for more awareness raising and capacity building, especially for the judiciary to provide them with the necessary knowledge to identify SLAPPs and to handle them.  

Journalists themselves need to be empowered, as not all of them know what is a SLAPP and how they can get support. We think that CSOs should work closely with journalists to inform them about their rights and the mechanism available to them to get legal aid or any other kind of support they might need in case they are attacked.  

The Council of Europe is another actor working on a similar assessment, so we also communicate with them as we need synergies of this kind.  

 

This publication is the result of activities carried out within the Media Freedom Rapid Response  and within ATLIB - Transnational Advocacy for Freedom of Information in the Western Balkans, a project co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. All opinions expressed represent the views of their author and not those of the co-funding institutions.