Albanian Media 'Struggles with Corruption Reporting'

Albanian media report on corruption on a daily basis but the vast majority of this coverage is centred on press conferences by government institutions and exchanges of accusations between local political parties, says the new monitoring report published by BIRN Albania.

This shows that the Albanian media is failing in its watchdog role when it comes to corruption cases, the report says.

The report covers a three-month period from August 20 to November 20 last year, during which reporting on corruption in three national newspapers and the news broadcasts of three television stations was analysed.

According to the report, most print and broadcast media usually cover corruption cases or issues with straight news reports.

During the monitoring period, out of 715 articles on corruption, there were only 36 interviews or comment articles and 16 investigative reports in the print media. In television newscasts, of a total of 290 news pieces, only 17 were interviews or comments and six were investigative reports.

The majority of articles in newspapers (51 per cent) were only based on a single source and a significant minority (nine per cent) did not contain any sources.

The overwhelming majority of television news items (82 per cent) also only had one source. Most newspaper articles and the television news had identified sources, with a minority of 54 print articles and 14 broadcast news pieces using anonymous sources.

Albanian media's sources are usually from the public sector and political parties.

In the case of newspaper articles, 71 per cent of the sources come from the public sector and 25 per cent from political parties. In television news, political parties were the sources of 56 per cent of the news items, and the...