Activity Details (ID# 7515)

Activity Synopsis

Raise awareness of the advantages of media self-regulation. Identify obstacles to creating a press council in Albania. 

The Council of Europe experts explained the different possible ways of increasing media accountability, with the setting up of self-regulatory bodies being only one of them. They indicated that in their view, self-regulation was complementary to state regulation and experience in many countries showed that the former did not work unless the latter was solid. They also emphasised the need to secure funding for any self-regulatory body before it would be set up.

The Albanian speakers highlighted some of the existing media accountability initiatives such as the adoption of a Code of journalism ethics in 1998. Several obstacles to more structured accountability systems were identified such as the vulnerability of the profession in the sense that journalists´ organisations are extremely weak and many journalists do not have fixed contracts.
 

The chairperson of the roundtable, Mr Remzi Lani, from the Albanian Media Institute, concluded on behalf of the participants that the time was still not ripe for establishing a media self-regulatory council. That would not mean that other smaller-scale measures to promote responsibility could not be continued and developed. There, priority should be given to the training of media professionals. In addition, a representative of the National Commission on Radio and Television mentioned the possibility of granting only licenses to broadcasters who had adopted editorial guidelines. 

Journalists, including from the regions, parliamentarians, representatives of broadcasting regulatory bodies and public authorities 

Professor Robert Pinker, member of the Press Complaints Commission (UK), and Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand (France) 

Pall Thorhallsson, Administrative Officer, Media Division, DG II