Failed integration - My experiences with integration and the media in the Balkans

By Indre Zdanciute

Needless to say that newspapers, TV and radio stations in the former Yugoslavian countries are highly politicized. While in Slovenia and Croatia there are good examples of independent media, in Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia this is not always the case. The thing is, because of the high level of corruption and a huge unemployment rate in the latter countries, media managers fear democratic changes. Very often they belong to certain political parties, or have some personal relations to them. That is how it works around the Balkans: it simply opens way to better funding, government sponsorship and protection for specific media, as well as successful direct and indirect promotion of the certain political stream via the media.

Ethnic conflicts have always been a sensitive topic for the Western Balkan countries, with sensitivity coming predominantly from nationalism and ‘the Balkan mentality’, rather than beeing influenced by specific historical facts. For instance, the Albanian community has been living in the Republic of Macedonia for ages, however, the conflicts with the Macedonian community are still highly noticeable. Thus, the media plays a significant role in integration of the ethnic groups. Here, referring to media as locally integrated media, comprising journalists from different ethnic groups working together and reporting on the variety on sensitive ethnical issues. Sadly, in the Western Balkan countries this model is more theoretical for the moment.

I myself am representing international independent print media in Macedonia, and have had a lot of negative experience regarding integration. I work on youth issues and manage journalism projects with both major ethnicities in Skopje - Macedonian and Albanian. Firstly, young journalists in Skopje are unwilling to have any personal or professional relationship to their colleagues of the other ethnic group. Subsequently, there is a lack of objectivity in their usually quite nationalistic reports. Because ethnical prejudices are deeply rooted in the Balkan societies and because of a lack of information even the journalists are not contributing to the dialogue between the local communities. In addition, there is the political-economical fearfactor mentioned before, which restricts the freedom of speech to a great extend.

Based on the above, the future challenge for the media of the Western Balkan countries is to establish cooperation among local journalists. Presumably with the inclusion of international colleagues in order to achieve more tolerance and to share experiences on best practices. Only when people working in one media get along with each other, an open-minded, fearless media voice can bring a dialogue to society, with the aim of democratization and integration of different ethnic groups.

Indre Zdanicuite is 25 years-old and was born in Lithuania. She has been working as a volunteer with an NGO for youth media projects in Skopje since 2008.