Archive » Camaj describes evolution of media, information access in Kosovo

Shannon McEnerney | Feb. 25, 2010

Photo by Shannon McEnerney

Doctoral candidate Lindita Camaj shared her research on FOI legislation in post-war Kosovo during a colloquium Wednesday. The series provides a venue for researchers to present their work and garner feedback.

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First year doctoral student Kioko Ireri understands what journalists in Kosovo go through on a daily basis as they try to access information. He worked as a journalist in Kenya before coming to IU, and as a working journalist in Kenya, said he felt the political tensions along with the conflict that arises between the media and the government as a result.

“We are improving, but there is that saying that whoever controls the information is very powerful,” Ireri said.

It is this control for the right to information that shaped doctoral candidate Lindita Camaj’s talk, “Gatekeeping the ‘Gatekeepers’: Uses and misuses of the Freedom of Information legislation in a transitional country,” Wednesday at the Ernie Pyle lounge.

Camaj’s talk, part of the School of Journalism’s research colloquia series that allows researchers to present their work to their colleagues, focused on the Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation from the democratic perspective, analyzing how it affects the political culture and media freedom in post-communism countries such as Kosovo.

Camaj focused on Kosovo, independent since 2008, and relied on her research and her experiences interviewing Kosovo’s journalists. The country, since its war and independence from Yugoslavia, has built itself from scratch, Camaj said. It is also a young country, with most of the population under 30 years old.

Camaj said she is interested in how political culture and mass media have been “engineered” in a country emerging and developing away from communism.

“I strongly believe this interaction goes both ways,” Camaj said. “That political culture has an affect on the mass media generated, and that mass media establishes or changes political culture.”

Additionally, political culture and mass media are affected by legislation. The FOI is one piece of legislation that serves as a tool to enhance the democratic political culture.

“Political culture is a concept that is constantly in flux rather than just static,” Camaj said. Still, she explained, political culture contains many influences from the past that coexist with influences from the present.

During the 10 years of Kosovo’s transition, media evolved as well, also drawing on the past. Camaj said during the time of her research, the government didn’t have a spokesperson or a media relations office. To access information from the government, said the prime minister assigned a time from 1 to 2 p.m. to meet with the media. One of the journalists Camaj spoke with said this one hour meant that each journalist would get 29 seconds to get the information he or she needed for their daily work.

Another aspect that’s evolving is how media institutions are perceived. Some media institutions that are more favored have better access to information, Camaj said. This leads to smuggling: Some journalists in Kosovo have no problem obtaining the information they need through other ways if they cannot receive it directly.

Other journalists Camaj interviewed said local institutions don’t have public relations offices, so it’s hard to know whom to call. They had better luck with international sources that usually had a contact person.

Camaj said the Kosovo journalists are aware of the Freedom of Information legislation but said they don’t use it due to previous bad experiences. Camaj said this may be due to a lack of proper training for the government and journalists to understand how the legislation works. And, after the adoption of the legislation, some government institutions relied on the law to delay information, rather than to convey it, she said.

“Bureaucrats view FOI law to deny information as opposed to authorizing it,” Camaj said, adding that information that should be open, like the prime minister’s salary, remains closed.

“Despite the good intentions to help media freedom, the culture of secrecy found a way to infiltrate when it came to the implementation of this law,” Camaj said.

This brings Camaj’s research back to the past. Before achieving independence, Kosovo only knew of the political socialization of Yugoslavia, and this was the system that Kosovo’s current political elites grew up in. It was all they knew. The political culture of the current Kosovo government stems from habitual experiences from the previous system more than anything else, Camaj said.

Photo by Shannon McEnerney

Camaj interviewed journalists in Kosovo to learn how they accessed information. She said Kosovo government found a way to use FOI legislation to deny information rather than provide it.

After the war, Kosovo’s media institutions employed young people, people who had never had experience in journalism, and these institutions trained them. Camaj said that the average age of the employees at one of the newspapers in Kosovo is 20.

Furthermore, when there is opposition in the government, more information is leaked to journalists, Camaj said. Anonymous sources are overused, and this affects credibility, which is another consequence when problems result from accessing information.

After listening to Camaj, Ireri said he understands this conflict between the government and media and reflects on a time he remembers in Kenya when there was only one TV station. Now, there are many more stations because of the increased media freedom.

“It’s not something that can be changed overnight,” Ireri said about the working relationship between political culture and mass media. “These things will change, but we need to have people advocating for the right. It’s the only way to change from one generation to another and achieve better things in the future.”

Camaj agreed.

“The journalists are aware things can’t change overnight and it depends on the charisma of the government leaders,” she said. “It depends on the will of the government.”