THE POOR POVERTY NEWS

By Arben Llapashtica
llapashticaarben@hotmail.com

Intro to journalism/Intro to KIJAC


The poverty figures remain still the old ones, 37 % of the population
lives with 1.43 Euro cent a day, while 15 % live with 0.93 Euro cent a day.

This part of the society has attracted the media attention more than once.

But, how did the three national televisions of Kosova dealt with this sensitive issue?

Created after the 1999 war, with a modest program of 2 hours, now 8 years on with 24-hour program, the three national TV’s RTK, KTV, RTV21, are in the same line when doing “social” stories.

The national broadcasters are full of young journalists, which earn more than the officials in Kosovo’s institutions.

There might be some reasons why these broadcasters are paying attention of such cases,

The unsettled status of Kosovo or the imposed protocol journalism carried out by bias editors.

It happens especially during the weekend.
Saturdays and Sundays apart of stories which have to do with books promotion or the ever-lasting garbage problem, in three broadcasters one can see always at least one poverty story.

The journalists deal with such stories, when they have nothing else to deal with.


The Poverty stories are made especially also when United Nations Kosovo Team (UNKT), announce they will give the traditional poverty prize.

The journalists do well in meeting the criteria set by UNKT.

According to these criteria the main subject of a story should be the poverty, which can be seen, from political or socio-economic perspective.

Reportage with people living in poverty can also be included.

The story is likely to have different elements within the story, so the poverty can be shown as good as possible.

When they do the poverty stories, the journalists would show a family, whose members would cry in front of the camera.

At the end, it could happen that an official from the Ministry of Work and Social Welfare, would appear talking about well-known figures, and as usually saying their budget is very low.

The other factors that are important and explain why people are poor, are rarely shown on TV.

One of the journalists will for sure win 1000 Euros from UNKT. It may be that the story he has shown, will affect some rich viewers, how will feel sorry and will decide to help that family by sending them money, or goods.

But, what is happening with journalism and those 40 % of the people living in poverty?

The human stories, and the problems people face, yet, are not so much seen on TV’s for many reasons:


n The lack of dealing with such issues
n The difficulties with doing a full story with the poverty as a subject, with all elements
n Journalists are not dealing with the cause of poverty. In stead they talk with “the victims” who are easy to find and meet. You can talk to them easily, but the “aggressor” in most of the cases are not identified
n “The conflict of interests” in many cases doesn’t allow the editors to let the journalists deal properly with poverty issues
n Dealing with such a story takes a lot of time, and investigation, which has its cost. The media owners don’t want to spend a lot, for a story which will only cover 2-3 minutes of their on-air show
n Media should be the one which helps the society to get emancipated. In this sense, the audience is not used that the media deals permanently and does follow-ups of such stories, and as a result doesn’t ask for such news. The audience is used to get whatever is served to, and media shows whatever the audience gets easy

Anyway, the editors in three national broadcasters explain their perspective in dealing with this issue.

Mentor Shala, the editor of Main News editions in RTK, says that lately they are not doing stories about poverty for two reasons.

“We can see that lately we are not doing poverty stories, not because we don’t want to, but because our focus is the status issue. But, it doesn’t mean we are not going to do them again. But, I can recall that after every story we broadcasted a lot of people called us, willing to help people in need, as the institutions aren’t doing that. But, what happens next? A lot of families understood that showing on TV can make them get some help, so they were pressing the journalists and editors to make them appear on TV. This is another reason why we called-off such stories, at least for a while”, Shala says.

According to him, the journalists compete in such prizes, because of the poor salaries they get where they work.

Meanwhile, Xhemajl Rexha, editor and journalist with KTV, says that this station is still remaining “the alternative one”, in every issue they deal with.

“I consider poverty, just as any other issue we deal with in our station. We try to give all our stories a different perspective, one you can’t see in other TV stations. We’ve being doing poverty stories for a long time, and always get as many sources as we can to best explain why this poverty is enormous, and how we can get over it. This means we would start a regular story with a family living in poor conditions, we would have someone from the Ministry of Work explaining how they’re coping with this problem, some figures and an expert giving opinions about how to overcome the problem. Anyway, we do not want to become “a humanitarian broadcaster”. But, we still feel good knowing our stories have an enormous effect”, Rexha thinks.

He says that they show stories of how people would work, anything, just to survive and not depend of the help, and which according to him can serve as example for other people.

Rexha is aware journalists do make special stories just to compete for the prizes, but recalls that a KTV cameraman won the prize last year, with a documentary done way before the prize was announced.

Anyway, in RTV 21, the young editor, Xhevdet Sfarça is critical to the people he works with.
“Unfortunately, the people of Kosovo are still very much politicized, while the editors of Kosovan media, including the ones in RTV21, are “afraid” that their news wouldn’t have much viewers if the first 3-4 news wouldn’t be dealing the status issue. The other problem is that dealing with such issues as poverty or corruption is costly. It requires time, professional journalists, and courage of the media, which I think doesn’t exist. The media policy is important factor when doing these stories. The media bosses don’t want to break their good relationships with the institutions, because of the mutual interests”, Sfarça says.
But, it is in RTV21 where Gjergj Filipaj , Communications Coordinator at the UN Kosovo Team in Pristina, sees more poverty stories. Still, he says that the issue is not in media’s agenda.
“RTV 21 is one of the few Kosovo media that has regular stories broadcasted, which are considered poverty friendly while other media are more discriminative towards poverty stories. However, I can say that there is a positive mood towards reporting on poverty but this trend is still low compared with other issues that are on the top of the Kosovo newspapers, radios, and television stations agenda “ Filipaj says.

He as well is critical to the journalists that do wining-prize stories.

“I have the impression that journalists write about poverty issues only when there is a reward for this kind of reporting. I can give an example about this. The UN Kosovo Team (UNKT) where I work as communications coordinator has established a UNKT Poverty Prize. Journalists who compete in this competition mostly publish their stories on the requested deadline; if for example the deadline is the 1st October then most of the stories published/broadcasted are from 15 to 30 September. This means that they would not write these kind of stories if they would think that they can win the UNKT Poverty Prize. Most of the stories brought to this competition have the needed information, balance, source but they lack the reason why these stories are published, just for the sake of competing and winning a prize”, thinks Filipaj.

Anyway, crying people needing help we will still see on TV’s, but an answer what’s behind that, and what to do next, is just so hard to find, at least in the media.