>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:03 ^M00:00:23 >> Grant Harris: Good afternoon. And I am Grant Harris. I am Chief of the European division here at the Library of Congress. We are happy that you're joining us today. This is a really good crowd we've got. Can you hear me all right through the room? >> Very good. >> Yes, good. >> Grant Harris: All right. Very good. I want to thank all of you for coming out here. Before we introduce our guest speaker, Flora Nikolla, who will talk about the Albanian press, I do want to thank a number of people here, especially from the Washington, D.C. chapter of Vatra, the Pan Albanian Federation of America. Thank you for being here and for helping organize this event. And I appreciate having an interpreter for this occasion from Vatra. So Ms. Nora Bucaj will help us with the interpretation up here. I'd like to recognize Ms. Mamica Toska from the Republic of Albania, the Embassy here in town. Thank you for being here. And also the Minister Counsellor at the Embassy, Mr. Visser Jerte [assumed spelling]. Thank you for being here, and any other's who may be here from the Embassy. Very briefly, let me say that the Library of Congress is proud of our Albanian Collections. We have about 17,000 volumes at this point. We believe we have the largest collection, certainly in the Americas. I would say it's actually doubtful that there is a library that has a larger collection than the Library of Congress other than libraries inside Albania itself. We currently receive about 350 monographs each year from or about Albania. Most of those are in the Albanian language. The collections are particularly strong in history, language, and literature, but also the humanities, the social sciences. So we have really a lot of great materials; not only books and periodicals -- maps, recorded sound, sheet music, just really incredible collections here, so I am proud to be the specialist for Albania. I cover several languages. Albania is certainly not my first language, but I'm very happy to cover that country, and Kosova as well. And I've been to both a couple of times each. So now for the inevitable announcement for your cell phones. Just take a look at those if you haven't don't that already. We want this to be a nice recording. This is being recorded by the Library of Congress. We hope to make a webcast out of it. It's not a live production here, but it takes us a few months to make it that way. So now, finally, getting to the main point, I'm very pleased to be able to introduce the journalist and editor, Flora Nikolla. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Albanian Telegraphic Agency, or ATA. It's been that agency for a long time, Albania's main press agency. Her career with Ata has covered most of the years since 1993, working as an editor, a journalist, and a script writer for ATA's magazines and on other projects such as Spanish radio, she speaks Spanish, and the Albanian Film Festival. Ms. Nikolla will discuss today the Albanian press after Communism. If there is time, she may delve into speaking about the Albanian diaspora. She knows a lot about the diasporas in many countries and its relationship to Albania. But her main topic today is really the press and a history of that. So please help me welcome her. And I should say also that our interpreter today -- I may have mentioned her name -- Nora Bucaj. We're very happy to have Nora here. I'm not sure where she's sitting right now, but she'll -- there -- outstanding. Okay, all right. So you two will have to share these microphones, so. All right, please come up. Thank you and help me welcome -- ^M00:04:52 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:58 >> Flora Nikolla: Thank you. >> Grant Harris: Thank you. Let me just point out these two buttons. To go forward and backward and on these. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Grant Harris: All right? >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. ^M00:05:06 ^M00:05:14 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:06:40 ^M00:06:44 >> Nora Bucaj: Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, distinguished representatives of the Library in Congress, Mr. Grant Harris and Mr. Jason [inaudible], distinguished representatives of the Diplomatic Corps, distinguished compatriots, it is a great honor and privilege to be here today, in a temple of knowledge, in the greatest library of the world, an elite institution that is a dream for book admirers, book readers, and book writers, to speak on Post-Communist Journalism, this dear and difficult profession, but one that adds significant value in the development of society as it should. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak from this podium of honor on a time that Albanian journalism experienced and thanks, and thanks to its efforts, managed to become the lifeblood of a denied freedom. And thank you for the opportunity to represent Albanian press behind which stand thousands of professionals who, irrespective of their political leanings, want to know the news and know how to tell it. Thank you. And as a result of the opportunity you have given me, I shall be, for today, their voice. ^M00:08:09 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:09:25 ^M00:09:29 Thank you for your time. Thank you for being here in this place of knowledge and human civilization to talk to you about post-Communist journalism. But also the outstanding Albanian diaspora which has a place in the press. I would say today that no one is a professional by accident. And I want to say that I don't believe that for almost 30 years now I am in this profession, a noble profession with dimensions in humanity and society. ^M00:10:00 I recall today that I first connected with journalism in my early childhood. There was an entire generation of remarkable journalists and writers at that time that would become a comprehensive list of personalities like [foreign words], and even the decadent ones persecuted by the regime like [foreign words], my dad's friends. My dad, a journalist for 45 years, 25 of which as Editor-in-Chief of ^IT Hosteni Magazine ^NO, considered as the only opposition magazine of a one-party Albanian Nation. They were people who were always around during my youth. I would hear their conversations. And today I realize that subconsciously, without knowing, I started to fall in love with my profession, a noble profession at its core, which can be all-consuming and leave you with only passion. ^M00:11:15 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:11:54 ^M00:11:58 This is how journalism became a part of me. Without formal courses initially, this is how I became familiar with the difficulty in being a journalist, during the hard times of survival, known as Communism, a desire to write and tell the truth. And its coverup with sorrow in a murder of conscience. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Nora Bucaj: Okay. ^M00:12:25 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:13:47 As a kid and later on when I was older I heard this in experience through my dad who ran the magazine ^IT Hosteni ^NO for 25 years, a comedy magazine that satirized the negative appearances in society within Communist norms, which were actually great limitations. It was supposed to be the opposition in a country where opposition was banned. This was basically impossible. This is how I came to know my father's pain. The faith of an idealist that was never realized for a generation that believed in it. I came to know his unspoken rebellion. On another way I recognized the suffering of his close friends and colleagues, convicted for breaking the Communist ideal which, in fact, turned out to just be a utopia because, actually, a political regime should be in the service of carrying out the rule of a clear conscience, and not for conforming to the opposite. I remember the sorrow of my father's gaze eyes while working in a remote area. He had seen his dear friend, Mr. [foreign words], one of the most brilliant journalists on economy, walking with droopy shoulders and eyes to the ground. He was carrying out his conviction as a political criminal in a mine under dire conditions. He called him out by name, but he continued to walk with droopy shoulders, a frail body, and eyes to the ground. Again he called out, and again he continued to walk, to walk to a cold place for overstepping the party ideals. Years later, in Albania, after 1990, when the press should have been free, I heard my father and Mr. [foreign words] remember that episode, many times actually. He would always answer my father's concern the same way. "I couldn't speak because I couldn't condemn you, too." ^M00:15:46 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:16:55 In 1993, the Albanian Telegraph Agency, under a secluded bunker, was launched through an institution made up of only high-level party members. I participated in a contest organized to bring in young journalists. Albania was open. Freedom of the press, print and government law was just the beginning. When the Democratic Party's newspaper, ^IT Rilindja Demokratike ^NO, started being printed, hundreds of people smashed the storefront windows of the shops that sold newspapers while standing in line waiting for their free-speech newspaper that they had been missing for years. The number of newspaper copies sold for an impoverished Albania at the time was an astounding 60,000 a day, a figure never before seen during the Communist era when there were only newspapers belonging to the State Party, categorized according to social groups, in professional union newspapers for the youth, for women, all with the same ideology known as Socialist Realism. ^M00:18:08 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:19:04 ^M00:19:08 So, in the early 1990s with the great democratic changes in the country, Albanians began to enjoy the freedom that was forcefully denied for 45 years. In fact, the years 1988 to 1990 in the Albanian press, a tendency for rebellion of ideas outside the state contours had started to emerge. At that time a new value for knowledge had been identified by the intellectual elite of the country. Articles in the newspapers [foreign words] generated an identity for Albanian press which would turn out to be the winning model for the early 1990s with newspapers like ^IT Rilindja Demokratike ^NO -- ^M00:19:53 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:20:00 -- Albania, et cetera. There were actually quite a few for a population of only about 3 million in my country. But, perhaps, we were all racing in search for that lost freedom. ^M00:20:12 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:20:59 ^M00:21:04 Even at the Albanian Telegraph Agency, when I started working there so long ago, back in 1993, it couldn't overlook the tendencies for freedom in concepts, reporting, writing, and the news. Among the new press, many times the news agency was seen as a Communist-era activism vehicle which many times hindered its development. An image is still -- it still struggles to [inaudible] today, despite the fact that this institution has produced many well-known journalists. Also, its tried and true formula that the news agency has implemented in reporting and writing the news. Regardless, journalists of the first post-Communist period were young and passionate. Journalism took up our days and nights. ^M00:21:54 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:23:04 ^M00:23:08 During this renewal of private and pluralistic press, particular qualities of newspapers and journalists sprouted. But they were dominated by initiatives to create media controlled by political party ownership, specifically Socialists, Democrats, Republicans, and Social Democrats, all the parties created after the '90s during the transition to a pluralistic system. The topics that were reflected and reported by journalists in the press -- outlets began to expand. There were a variety of topics in politics -- education, culture, and social issues. They started featuring the lives of public figures and a new stratification in Albanian society that was formerly lacking in one of the eastern countries where Communism had shaped a typical one-party society. The economic and political development of the post-Communist country was being presented in the new press which was being created, not without difficulty. Along with this phenomenon, the image of journalists was being created according to the respective fields on which they wrote and reported. ^M00:24:27 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:25:54 Despite the desire and the will to make journalism not uncommon, I thought that journalists of this era were improvise experts, passionate pioneers of a generation brought up in a dictatorial system, but who had overcome the odds while in this new era. They put their personal ambitions over everything in the journalist profession which, at that time, was seen as a profession of added value, and with a lot of curiosity. I recall that in this work vortex and the passion to create the face of a new press there were shortcomings such as the lack of criteria for recruiting and dismissing journalists, the lack of employment contracts, and above all, the lack of a law on press on which the media and journalist activity was regulated. The first press law number 7756 in 1993 was created without much modification from a German model and without consultation with local media. Soon it was seen that there were constraints provoking reaction from journalists, although the law remained in effect until the 1997 elections. The old law was abolished by a new law, the printing press, which -- two sentences were formulated. The press is free. Freedom of the press is protected by the law. ^M00:27:27 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:28:58 So I guess to try and remember -- >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Nora Bucaj: -- the order of [inaudible]. I'm thinking that there was a lot of -- that happened during the Kosovo War and there was a big thanks to the ^IT Voice of America ^NO for being that window of direction and -- in guiding the press in Albania. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. ^M00:29:27 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:30:40 >> Nora Bucaj: With the development of society and its norms, the global life that Albanians began to experience, modes of communication changed. In the early 2000s televisions took the baton of public information, giving the first light blow to the media of the past. New television crews with the latest technology from the media world were created by journalists, giving another spirit to the public presentation, but also in the concept of payment and distinguishing itself significantly from the written media. In the time when the newspapers had reached 80- to 90,000 copies of daily newspapers, and [foreign words] in 1997 seems to be a distant past. Today, circulation of daily newspapers, about 20, hardly reach 40,000 copies, while sales are low. Analysts say that while the media previously suffered from state dictatorship and control. In the last 10 years the Albania media suffer from business and their submission to politics. According to them, most media outlets are connected with political decision-makers through business, and are fully controlled by them. ^M00:32:00 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:33:04 Someone joked with me a few days ago that if a few years had passed -- a few years ago it was difficult to distinguish the parties from newspaper editorials. Now, media are more business, and there is no distinction to where a business plan starts and where the free press ends. It seems that the Albanian media openly hold one side of a political conflict, even competing to show their loyalty and interests of larger parties without hiding behind an official impartiality. According to the Albanian analyst [foreign words], from this difficult situation laws can be drafted against owners' conflicts of interest, and journalists' boards that determine the editorial positions themselves of their media. But today there is also an increase in civic journalism on social networks and investigative writings in new online journalism, where online sites are the main source of information. Yet another blow to newspapers. In this sense it seems that citizens are becoming more active in online media versus a reality that cannot be concealed. With a population of about 3 million, people currently living in the country, Albania remains small, an unfavorable market for the media. ^M00:34:28 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:35:59 ^M00:36:03 And as a small market, it creates difficulties in consolidating media businesses as the cost of these businesses' products is almost the same as that produced in the media that work for big markets, while profits are much smaller. Not so often, journalists follow the unwritten rules of the owners and editors. That's configuring a fifth branch of power over the fourth known to have existed throughout time. It is this fifth power that forces journalists from all media today to write for media owners who, in some way, for their own interests, give impetus to self-censorship and informality in the employment of journalists. There seems to be an uneven media environment where some media outlets are misused by business and politics. In nearly 26 years of political transition, Albania has passed a media transition with positive changes, which certainly created stratification of journalists and publicists in Albanian society. We already have veteran journalists, seasoned journalists who today are around the age of 50, and journalists who are being created, but are, in fact, confronted with a new online reality. Journalists who spin the news from office walls and computer windows, bringing all too often false news that shake the readers' faith. ^M00:37:31 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:38:01 ^M00:38:05 Confronted and raised with a long trajectory in both journalism and visual media, I say that journalism today varies from the time when I started with it, liberated in all its spheres of time and space. I say with conviction and advice, that beyond this freedom, the journalist should write with a cool head, a warm heart, and clean hands, given that truth should always be delivered, and that ultimately truth triumphs. ^M00:38:36 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:39:12 [ Applause ] ^M00:39:18 >> Grant Harris: I have questions of people. ^M00:39:23 ^M00:39:26 >> Nora Bucaj: Yeah. >> Merita McCormack: Merita [inaudible]. So [inaudible] I'm from the Victims of Communism Royal Foundation. One thing that you mentioned was that -- >> Nora Bucaj: Sorry, one moment. >> Merita McCormack: Sorry. ^M00:39:39 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:39:44 >> Grant Harris: You know -- and I think -- because [inaudible], why don't you come up [inaudible] here, so that we can just -- >> Merita McCormack: Thank you. Okay. [Inaudible] in here. >> Grant Harris: Just keep the questions on the short side. >> Merita McCormack: Sure. Will do. Okay, great. So you mentioned that newspaper sales are falling. ^M00:40:01 And I was wondering, do you think it's because a lot of millennials and a lot of citizens in Albania believe that they shouldn't even read the news anymore because they have no power over what's happening in politics? Do you think that the reason why newspaper sales are falling is not because people don't want to read the news, but because they feel like they have -- they cannot control what's going to be happening in future elections? ^M00:40:27 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:40:36 -- we're not done. ^M00:40:37 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:40:42 >> Nora Bucaj: Or the last part. >> Merita McCormack: Say we have no control over politics at this point. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. ^M00:40:46 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:41:56 >> Nora Bucaj: Okay. So this is something that is not unique to Albanians who -- the youth are -- get their news online and through other media like Facebook. But the Albanian youth do seem to be withdrawn from current events. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Nora Bucaj: Okay. ^M00:42:18 ^M00:42:23 >> Grant Harris: Other questions? ^M00:42:24 ^M00:42:29 >> I can make the question in English and translate it in Albanian for you. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Okay, thank you. So what's the role of Albanian Telegraphic Agency now? Is it still state-owned and in the variety of media that exists? What is the position of this agency? >> Flora Nikolla: Okay, thank you. ^M00:42:51 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:44:58 Okay. >> I've got a question [inaudible]. Okay. >> Flora Nikolla: Thank you. >> No problem. ^M00:45:03 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:45:10 Oh, okay. So what Flora summarized was that basically the role of ATA has diminished, has diminished significantly, but still it remains good because there is no contest from those who receive the news through ATA because it still stays faithful to the standards and the norms that ATA has. And she used a very nice idiom there. She said that all the online websites that you see today -- there are so many that it's like the mushrooms after the rain, which basically -- there is many of them, and you don't know who to trust. But although the role has diminished, that was the key substance of her explanation, that although the role is diminished, it's still the facts that there is no one there -- she mentioned that the foreign embassies and other diplomatic corps that are based in Albania, they're not contesting what ATA is broadcasting. >> It's the most reliable. >> It's the most reliable news source in Albania. So -- sorry. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> I have a feeling it's the most reliable news source in Albania, but the point is, would you think that maybe the -- it's on the Web, the webcast, and if you want to go and read the ATA news -- so you have to pay for it. Maybe when it's involved a cost, you know, a financial cost, maybe that would be the problem, you know, for others -- ^M00:46:30 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:46:34 >> Okay. >> Grant Harris: [Inaudible] it a question. >> Yes. >> We want this on the website. Repeat the question. >> So -- in Albanian. >> Grant Harris: In English and -- so it -- >> Flora Nikolla: Now, okay. >> So anybody here didn't understand? ^M00:46:46 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:47:02 >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Grant Harris: I want the webcast to hear the English also. >> The English, English version. >> Oh, the English version. >> Oh. >> Grant Harris: If you could repeat the basic question -- >> Yeah. >> You have to come and say that. If you have -- it has to be here. Sorry. >> Okay. Well, the question was, don't you think that the Albanian Telegraph Agency, if it makes it webcast news free, would it be possible for the others -- or other institutions to read the news and not to have that problem that you already addressed in the first question? Thank you. >> Flora Nikolla: Thank you. ^M00:47:41 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:49:49 [ Laughter ] ^M00:49:53 >> Okay, [inaudible]. >> Okay. So -- ^M00:49:55 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:50:00 Okay. So Flora's answers to Ms Tosca regarding that question was that she says if all the years -- all the years, she said, there has been a fee. There has always been a subscription to the ATA. And she says that what you said she agrees personally, but she believes that the people who are in charge of ATA are the people who made that change. And as far as she understands, these days that she's in the United States, there may be a change into the people who run the agency. So as soon as she returns, she will let them know this new proposal that came out of here. And she said I will let them know. And then she went into how it hurts her, and she thinks that [inaudible] was -- [inaudible] is a journalist here at ^IT Voice of America ^NO, but she used to briefly work there. And she said that [inaudible] will sympathize with me. And then she used another cute expression. She said that we are just like that cow that we keep giving milk to everyone, and then they don't recognize where the milk came from, like [laughter]. And then she said we are those heathen journalists that we are somewhere and sometime and place, but that there is -- basically, she was saying that people can take news and take paragraphs and take it from them, but the ATA, the journalists that work there, are nowhere to be seen or recognized, basically. And she said, but it is that will that we have and that love that we have that keeps us going. ^M00:51:32 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:51:40 >> We need you here, Nora. >> Grant Harris: Nora, could you step -- >> So this is good. Okay. >> Shall I translate in Albanian? >> Grant Harris: So we'll keep this brief. >> Yes. The Albanian press also publishes the articles from ^IT Voice of America ^NO, but they never cite us. So this is a problem of the Albanian press. I work at VOA, yes. ^M00:52:04 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:52:26 Maybe it is time that journalists in Albania through the law of the press should require that they are cited, you know, the name of the author, the name of the author is cited in the press. Yeah. >> Okay. Do you want a translation on that? What she said in Albanian? ^M00:52:46 [ Inaudible Conversations ] ^M00:52:49 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:53:54 >> Okay. Okay, okay. So, two things. Regarding the first one, again, there is sympathizing with what was going back and forth. And Flora said it is a conscience thing. It's -- you know, the journalists will do the plagiarism and don't cite. It's on their conscience. And she said, we are in a century that you cannot put balance and terror upon them. It's a [inaudible] that has been going for a long time. And regarding the payment, let me [inaudible]. I believe she refers to -- Ms. [foreign words] said that, yes, she says that -- regarding the payment. The state pays, but all the money that is generated from ATA goes back to the state budget. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> I think that's it. >> Flora Nikolla: Okay. >> Grant Harris: I think we're just a little over. Is there one burning question on another aspect of this? All right, one burning question, right. Why don't you come up here? You come up here with your question. ^M00:54:50 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:54:57 >> Is there a code of ethics or code of conduct for journalists as professionals? So it's not just on their conscious. >> Grant Harris: Okay. ^M00:55:08 [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] ^M00:55:34 >> Yes. As I previously mentioned, that there is a law as well, but there are things that should be reviewed, and law should be improved on this. Okay, that's the summary. >> Grant Harris: Okay. I'm sorry to be the time manager and cut this off. This is actually quite interesting. And thank you all for coming. And thank -- let's all thank Nikolla -- Flora Nikolla for being here. Thank you. >> Flora Nikolla: Thank you, thank you [applause]. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.