Reporting Kosovo

An Albanian NGO has done a study comparison of four major Kosovar and four Serb newspapers. On the Albanian side there is progress but not where they would want them to be. They also think that this as good as it's going to get. I found interesting the role that the press connected to the opposition parties are playing. Also, I was surprised that Thaqi's Epoka e Re is doing a much better job in reporting and bringing out the Serb perspective than Rugova's Bota Sot. The complete report can be found in English, Albanian, and Serbian at the bottom of this link . Their conclusions are below.

In three of the four Kosovo Albanian newspapers can be seen a reflection of the harsh criticism that the Kosovo Albanian media experienced in the aftermath of the March 2004 riots, when the Albanian-language media were accused of fanning the flames of ethnic intolerance with aggressive, loaded and inflammatory reporting, and with failing to distinguish in a professional manner between news, rumour and comment.

As a result, they have adopted new patterns, enforcing more neutral and less passionate headlines on Serb-related stories. Bota Sot has partly sidestepped the issue simply by not reporting often on returns, or on Serbian views on final status. When it did so, it was often more sensationalist than the others and more prone to blurring the dividing line between news and comment.

The differences between the four newspapers reflect different political agendas and the needs of different readerships, with Bota Sot offering a more straightforward diet of nationalism to a less sophisticated audience, and some of the others attempting to offer a more “civic” orientated agenda to a different audience and to readers who see themselves as more aware of the dynamics of the European integration process. These newspapers clearly feel their readers do not need or desire crude interpretations or comments to accompany Serbian statements on Kosovo.

The more moderate Kosovo newspapers chose other methods to convey their opinions on Kosovo’s future, juxtaposing the statements of Serb politicians beside those of Kosovo Albanian politicians or experts, for example, thus leaving it up to the readers to compare and contrast. By highlighting the positive aspect of Serb returns – the rebuilding of houses, schools and churches, among others – they subtly promoted Kosovo’s independence by stressing what they saw as its growing normalization

Turning to the Serbian newspapers, the difference in the way they reported on the final status of Kosovo reflects the fact that whereas the issue of Kosovo’s independence unites ethnic Albanians of all political allegiances, it divides Serbs. While the great majority of Serbs opposes independence, a significant minority does not so much support the idea as accept it as inevitable. Moreover, even the anti-independence majority is divided over the nature of the autonomy they are prepared to offer and over whether they wish to keep all or just part of Kosovo in Serbia. This cleavage in society explains the clear difference in the way that the final status argument was reported in Danas, and the way in which it was covered in the other three Serbian newspapers.

This difference in Serbian society over Kosovo informed the approaches takes by the four newspapers to the Eide report, violent incident and refugee returns, with only Danas attempting seriously to include Albanian perspectives or Albanian sources in the debate.

Overall, the Serbian and Albanians media are, with small but significant exceptions, mirror images of one another, routinely disenfranchising the other side by the simple expedient of not reporting seriously their versions of any story. In short, this study reinforces a perception that the media in Kosovo and Serbia continue to tell their respective readerships mainly what they want to hear, which is that “our” side are victims and “their” side are perpetrators of racism, violent persecution and mindless acts of cruelty. Where the two national groups are portrayed in a cooperative light, as in some sections of the Kosovo newspapers, it is often merely with a view to supporting Kosovo’s claim to be a normal society and thus deserving of international recognition.

Whether any criticisms of the media in Serbia and Kosovo for its one-sidedness can be expected to have any effect is questionable. The intrusion of market forces into what was until relatively recently almost a branch of government has made the media more competitive than before, more susceptible to small changes in readership and more averse to taking risks with a fragile, fickle reading public. A trend towards tabloidisation and to lower pagination has left even less editorial space than there was for in-depth, balanced reporting on sensitive subjects.

Given these hard economic facts, it is probably unrealistic now to expect the media to lead a debate, in any progressive sense, on vexed national issues such as the future of Kosovo. With the exception of a small group of newspapers targeting a small cosmopolitan audience, the media will most likely continue to echo and follow what editors feel are established prejudices. In other words, when attitudes change in society, the media are likely to follow and reflect them, not the other way around.