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Volume 6 number 2 Journalism Education page 37
Articles
Training journalists in
times of transition:
the case of Kosovo
Abit Hoxha, LMU Munich, Germany; Kenneth Andresen, pro-
fessor of media studies at the University of Agder, Norway.
Abstract:
With Kosovo as its case, this article explores the con-
text and challenges of journalism education in transition
societies. Journalists in Kosovo have lived through con-
stant changes from authoritarian to democracy. In this
struggle, journalism education has never been stable and
steady. The past conict events of the destruction of Yu-
goslavia haunts present day journalism in challenging hu-
man rights, ethics and even business model of Kosovar
media. The traumatic past, conict and ethic animosity is
still present in the public discourse among Kosovar jour-
nalists due to political resistance of the leadership of the
entire region to take steps towards recognizing conict-
ing past and the atrocities that happened. Over the last
decade, new journalism schools have been founded both
in public and private sector which reects signicant in-
crease in quality reporting. By utilizing previous research,
including data from the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS)
in Kosovo, the article discusses the aspect of transitional
journalism in Kosovo, which focuses on transitional jus-
tice and looks at the problems from a human rights ap-
Page 38 Journalism Education Volume 6 number 2
Articles
proach, including the education of journalists in the eld
of human rights but instead of learning from top down
approach. The data in the article show journalistic roles
shifting from traditional watchdog to activist role which
challenges journalistic professionalism at a time when
journalism education in higher education is in its infancy.
The article exposes the need for practical, tailored train-
ing about the realities of political pressure, history and
the transition. As one of the signicant gaps in the teach-
ing journalism in Kosovo is in relation to dealing with the
past, a lack of taught courses for journalists entering the
media market is seen as a weakness of the education sys-
tem in Kosovo along with other structural problems in
the media. Technology, globalization, rapid development
of social media leave much to be desired in the journal-
ism education in Kosovo.
Introduction: The emergence of transitional
journalism in the Balkans
Journalists and media institutions in Kosovo have undergone multiple transitions over the
last decades; from an authoritarian regime, through war, into a post-war democracy and
later into a present transitional stage.
Throughout this time, the international community has been present with media assistance, including
numerous training courses for journalists (Rhodes 2007, Andresen 2015). Yet, after years of attempts to
practice perceived western standards, journalists in the region are increasingly applying what can be framed
as a democracy ghter-activist role where the journalists are struggling to understand their roles in the inter-
section of journalistic professional cultures, political and historical inuences; dealing with aspects of the
troubled past plays a key role here(Andresen, Hoxha & Godole, 2017). Data from the Worlds of Journalism
Study (WJS) in Kosovo reveals, on the basis of a survey of over 200 journalists, that Kosovar journalists
experience a gap between their personal ideal perceptions of roles, ethics and working conditions, and
the realities they face every day (Hoxha, Andresen & Dobrunaj, 2017). The WJS survey also identies
restrictions on autonomy, ethical dilemmas and political pressure. More signicantly, it also uncovers how
journalists and editors are in a process of redening their roles; from professional idealists to democracy
ghter-activists, who aim to put central topics on the public agenda. This stage can be framed as transitional
journalism.
In his introduction to the book European Journalism Education (Terzis, 2010), Hugh Stephenson reects
on the massive change in journalism education in Europe. He lists factors like technology and change in
media readership, but the rst change he brings up is the political context, especially in Eastern Europe
(Stephenson, 2010). In a few decades, journalists educated in the higher education system are not entering
Volume 6 number 2 Journalism Education page 39
Articles
the media world as agents of the state, but rather men and women seeking employment in post-communist,
highly transitional societies. Kosovo is one of these societies. There has so far been no academic study of the
state of journalism education in Kosovo. This article seeks to rst conceptualize the context of Kosovo as
a transitional society, setting the stage for journalism education in the country. Secondly, it outlines aspects
of current journalism education in Kosovo, including Kosovar journalist’s background. Thirdly, we bring
recommendations to the higher education in Kosovo as to how to work further in the journalism education.
Kosovo as a transitional society
The Western Balkans has developed through major changes in recent history and the media has trans-
formed along with political system drastically to the extent that is it still unable to nd a decent path to
development. Western Balkans has emerged from a communist past and that plays a very important role
on today’s media model and how journalism develops overall (Andresen et.al., 2017). As such, in post-
conict situations, journalists nd it dicult to maintain their independency and neutrality. Similarly, in
post-conict Germany after 1945, journalism focused on its role to de-nazify German society and in the
same way, the media in Kosovo took a stand on anti-communism. Post- conict environments are exposed
to dealing with its past through transitional justice and transitional institutional reform as part of “lustration”
of institutions and society but the role of media has never been looked upon from this angle. Transitional
justice mechanisms do look at the media as partners in reforms and necessary public engagements but don’t
see a crucial role in the process as media are not part of the state institutions (Hoxha, 2014). Despite this,
in many cases, public televisions and radios are state funded or publicly funded and therefore are in a way
part of the institutional framework.
Changing roles of media in transitional societies
The concept of transitional journalism has its roots in a history of constant transitions in the Balkans.
Media in the region was in part developed under as a state media model in Yugoslavia, with limited press
freedom. After the start of breakup of the federation, the media mostly focused on ethnic reporting and re-
porting about “the other”(Jusic, 2009; Luci & Markovic, 2009). In the words of Dejan Anastasijevic, a for-
mer journalist during the 1990s “most media in the former Yugoslavia report on The Hague trials as sports
matches, favoring “our boys” over prosecutors and jeering at the “monsters” from another ethnic group”1.
With the changes in former Yugoslavia and opening up of society came the challenges as well, as Splichal
rightly notes, “the freedom of the press increasingly became a freedom wielded by the owners of the means
of communication rather than by the citizens. Protable information was the most important” (1994: 4). The
media in Kosovo was a promoter of, for example, Albanian culture, language and politics and was never
detached from it. (Andresen, 2015) This is also the case in the broader Balkan region, where media fought
for a political cause. The cause shifted away from nationalism until the establishment of Yugoslavia, when
the idea of ‘unity and brotherhood’ across ethnic lines was one of the Yugoslav media’s roles in society,
given and controlled by the Communist regime (Robinson, 1977). However, the loyalty to ethnic national-
ism was an additional parallel force that grew during the break-up of Yugoslavia, giving journalists a double
sense of duty. In Kosovo, the Yugoslav identity was fragile and the dierent national identities came to life
quickly as Yugoslavia dissolved during the 1980s. The national identity was always deeper than the Yugo-
slav identity, although journalists accepted the ocial socialist line. This has been conrmed in this paper
by interviews with experienced journalists in Kosovo that worked in the Yugoslav media during the 1980s.
The escalation of ethnic and national conicts in the Balkans during the 1990s led to a shift from media as a
promoter of unity and brotherhood into media as active tool of ethnic hatred and war. This was a signicant
shift and from the 1990s until today is what most journalists interviewed for this research project relate to
when referring to media’s negative role in Kosovo. Their personal experience with media was one of media
as a promoter of ethnic conicts. Media was used as tools both for the Serbian regime as well as a counter-
reaction tool by the Kosovar Albanians. Media shifted from promoting unity to being tools of separation.
This is thoroughly documented in studies of how media in the region was used as propaganda instruments
in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia (Thompson, 1999; Kurspahic, 2003). In Kosovo in the late 1990s, media’s
role shifted to an even more active one; being a tool in war.
1 https://www.ictj.org/debate/article/what-justice (Accessed on 09/05/2017)
Page 40 Journalism Education Volume 6 number 2
In other conicts such as in Afghanistan, Saumava Mitra’s (2017) work on peace journalism and photo-
journalists nds that: “Foreign patronage has played both a positive role as well as negative roles according
to the respondents.” Although, only working with photojournalists, she nds that peace journalism spon-
sored by the foreign organizations “has to devise strategies to address the socio-cultural, political, eco-
nomic as well as practice-related constraints faced by journalists in conict-aected societies and bring its
universal normative goals and frameworks into critical contact with these existing factors.” (Mitra, 2017).
Furthermore, the importance of journalism education has been looked upon by Sadia Jamil where she nds
that: “The role of academia is very crucial in fostering safe journalism and producing well-aware journalism
professionals who can work eectively in conict and non-conict circumstances in Pakistan. According to
a journalism academic from a public-sector university in Pakistan, “universities are the rst training place
for journalism professionals.” (Jamil, 2017) Although looking at it in Pakistan, where cultural context and
circumstances are dierent from Kosovo, the argument that academia is the rst line of education provider
is applicable in our research as well. In the cases of Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, Umaru A. Pate, Lai
Oso and Abubakar Jibril argue that peace journalism and safety education should be taught as part of educa-
tion curricula as a response to: “personal and professional threats in reporting many of the violent conicts
and terror attacks that frequently erupt in their countries especially in the last fteen years”(2017). Mariate-
resa Garrido Villareal makes the claim that International Humanitarian Law has to be taught at schools for
journalists in order to ensure that journalists know their rights and have more instruments to their protection.
In her research, she concludes that: “Media personnel are considered as civilians during armed conicts
and they are entitled to receive a special protection. However, given the fact that they can be identied as
combatants and lose the protection, it is essential that journalists gain the necessary legal knowledge to bet-
ter protect themselves when covering wars.” (2017). Similarly, we have noticed that the relations to human
rights is present in Balkans as well but rather from the top down approach teaching journalists general Hu-
man Rights Law instead of focusing bottom-up from examples of Freedom of Expression or human rights
cases that relate to their work.
In the current transitions, the Balkans media today stands between ‘polarized pluralist journalism’ of the
Mediterranean and ‘democratic corporatist journalism’. This can be determined by studying the current
state of the media system. Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2012), argue that to study media system, one needs
to look at the structure of media market, political parallelism, professionalization of journalist as well as
external interference. The challenges faced by professionalization of journalists in the region take root in
the ‘current technological, economic, and cultural changes within the context of larger media systems’ Role
perception depends on ‘individual training, socialization, institutional demands, or personal job motiva-
tions’ (Donsbach, 2008). In these transitional times, the role of the development of journalism must be ad-
dressed, and a key aspect is the training of journalists.
Methodology
This paper uses a combination of methods to obtain the contextual data as well as the current analysis of
journalism education in Kosovo. Data from the authors’ previous research has been utilized. Andresen’s
PhD dissertation about the development of journalism in Kosovo (Andresen, 2015) as well as the authors’
study in the Worlds of Journalism Study (Hoxha, Andresen and Hoxha-Dobrunaj, 2016) provides vital data.
In the Worlds of Journalism study project in Kosovo, 206 journalists were surveyed through ‘one to one’
survey data gathering about their perception of journalism’s roles in society, trust, inuences on their work
and ethical considerations and the implications of education of journalists in the conict and post-conict
environment. This survey reveals the current status of journalism in Kosovo, according to the journalists and
editors from the cognitive perspective where journalists are asked to rate themselves. As a complementary
method for this paper, a follow up desk-based research evaluation on the current curriculums of the public
and private education institutions was conducted in order to assess what is being taught and towards what
eld of studies these programmes are oriented. We examined the curriculums from the “Hasan Prishtina2”
University of Prishtina , the only public university, in addition to and AAB3 University and UBT4 as private
education institutions providing courses on communication and thus related to journalism. In particular, the
case of the former KIJAC (Kosovo Institute of journalism and Communication) was used as an example
of an ‘international intervention’ educational institution set up to increase the quality of journalism in the
2 http://lologjia.uni-pr.edu/Departamentet/Departamenti08.aspx (Accessed on 09/05/2017)
3 https://aab-edu.net/en/faculties/mass-communication/ (Accessed on 09/05/2017)
4 http://www.ubt-uni.net/?cid=1,395 (Accessed on 09/05/2017)
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Volume 6 number 2 Journalism Education page 41
country. Additionally, four follow-up interviews were conducted with professionals lecturing and working
in teaching positions in the above mentioned institutions to provide insight information and commentary on
the ndings. The interviews were focused also around the questions of subjects are being taught normatively
and how these subjects are being taught in classes. The authors wish to emphasize that the interviews are
not sucient for the purpose of fully evaluating the actual teaching, but nevertheless they indicate teaching
subjects and quality oered in classes of these education institutions.
Previous training and education of journalists in Kosovo
Background from practice
As a point of departure, we want to lay out some of the background that journalists entering the eld of
journalists in Kosovo have shared. The following was assessed in Andresen’s study of journalism develop-
ment a few years ago (Andresen, 2015). First, many journalists in Kosovo have gained journalism practice
during the war in Kosovo. What eect has this experience had on the journalists? In conict areas, jour-
nalists frequently nd themselves as members of multiple professional and social communities. Studies
of journalists in Ethiopia (Skjerdal, 2012) and Israel (Zandberg & Neider, 2005) reveal how reporters are
drawn between a professional cause, such as reporting facts, and one or more political cause, which might
be reporting in line with a political or ethnic group. In Kosovo, journalists experienced these shifts strongly
when xers travelled with international reporters during the 1997-1999 armed conicts. During this period,
local journalism shifted from political reporting to eyewitness reporting. Several journalists and editors
conrm that the dramatic events changed the reporting in Kosovo. Formerly, the local journalists felt they
were under political control, not only by the Serbian authorities but also under heavy political pressure from
Albanian politicians. The escalation of violence in Kosovo from 1997 brought a new kind of journalism
which the newsrooms had not practiced before. The Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Koha Ditore remem-
bers: “It was the rst time that the journalism [here] was like that. The practice of journalism here until then
was controlled then and all the journalists were inuenced under the parties or under the higher authorities.
This was the rst time that we were doing something [on our own] and we were refusing to listen to anybody
telling us how we do it (personal interview, in Andresen, 2015)”.
The emergency reporting during the war (1997-1999) made the journalists also conscious of a cause, or
a purpose, of their reporting, but the main issue was to still bring news about the war to their audience. By
travelling with international reporters, they were able to ll a need for information as to where the ghting
took place and where the roadblocks were located. As the editor of Koha Ditore recognized, the combina-
tion of a cause and the reporting of events and facts transformed local journalists into eyewitness reporters.
However, they had to do this under cover of being translators and drivers for the international reporters.
Their own functions of being reporters for local Kosovar media had to remain a secret at the Serbian check-
points. A RTK journalist recollects the security challenges: “The situation was very hard and it was much
easier to say that you were just a translator for security reasons. If you said that you were a journalist and
you were with a foreign journalist, then it was dangerous for both to travel around Kosovo. That’s why we
used foreign journalists to prevent something from happening to us. So, we preferred to say [to the Serbian
police ocers] that we were just translators (RTK journalist, personal interview, in Andresen, 2015)”.
Education and background
The majority of young journalists in Kosovo have attended university besides working full-time as jour-
nalists, trying either to make up for lost education, or to get a degree (Andresen, 2015). A journalism job
is not a secure one in Kosovo, and they feel they need an education. This means that the majority work in
the newsroom during the day and studies at night. The result of the unnished and unstructured education
is that journalists in the newsroom will have a formal degree, something that many pursued in order to be
more prepared for a dicult job market also outside the media. The combination of a full-time job in the
newsrooms and being a full-time student is not uncommon.
Eight of the 50 journalists interviewed in Andresen’s study (2015) studied journalism at the ‘Faik Konica’
journalism school in Prishtina, a small private vocational school with many students, but little equipment.
Also, several of the leading Kosovar editors and journalists had been instructors there. Journalists in the
newsrooms having attended this school said they got a good theoretical foundation, but no practical experi-
ence. However, they claimed the school prepared them for the practical work in the newsrooms.
Most of the journalists started in the profession after the war in 1999. However, a signicant number of
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Page 42 Journalism Education Volume 6 number 2
the young Kosovar Albanian journalists started working in journalism during the 1990s, during the war,
and have thus experience from both war reporting and post-war journalism. They learned reporting ‘on the
job’, being recruited into for example, Koha Ditore, where they were socialized into an environment where
the job was twofold. Job number one was to give the Kosovar Albanian population information about the
escalating ghting between UÇK5 (in Albanian: Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës) and the Serbian forces. The
documentation of the establishment of the armed Albanian resistance was important, but the most signi-
cant reporting became the documentation of the crimes against Albanian civilians. The second task was to
follow Albanian politics at that time. There was a deep split between LDK (in Albanian: Lidhja Demokra-
tike e Kosovës), with Ibrahim Rugova at the helm, who opposed armed resistance, and other political parties
like LPK (in Albanian: Lëvizja Popullore e Kosovës), which UÇK to a large part was associated with (Bie-
ber & Daskalovski, 2003; Clark, 2000; Malcolm 2002). The young journalists had a steep learning curve in
covering a conict which they were a part of. Journalists tell of dramatic moments when they travelled into
the ghting areas, fearing being stopped at Serbian checkpoints.
Living through war has also given the journalists in newsrooms an unstructured and coincidental kind of
training. Many of the journalists strongly maintain that their best war-time journalism training happened
via their ‘on the job’ experience. Others worked as xers and stringers for foreign news agencies such as
RAI, CNN and BBC, and have expressed that working alongside international journalists was been the
best learning experience for them (Andresen, 2015). In sum, the journalists in the four newsrooms had an
unstructured background, characterized by the uncertainties of living through wars and conicts. Their
emotional and traumatic experiences from living under threats were present, although not easy to detect.
Their background from living through war became visible when mapping their education and training that
happened in an unstructured way where opportunism was a key factor. The journalists took opportunities of
education as well as journalism practice.
Contextualizing the training of journalists in a tran-
sitional society
The impact of international media support in Kosovo
During the early 2000s the international community oered a wide range of short-term training courses for
journalists in Kosovo as a remedy for the absence of journalism education (Rhodes, 2007; Andresen, 2015).
In assessing the impact from the journalism training part of international media support on the development
of journalism in Kosovo, we will partly draw on Silvio Waisbord’s understanding of how professional jour-
nalism should be measured by the extent to which it develops as a profession that can resist inuence from
external powers. “Professionalism refers to the ability of a eld of practice to set boundaries and avoid intru-
sion from external factors” (Waisbord, 2013: 11). Furthermore, “…professionalism represents the refusal to
comply with rules dictated by political and economic actors, thereby abdicating control over a distinctive ra-
tionality.” (158). Thus, professionalism must also be seen as the ability to develop ideology and techniques
of the profession. How has the training contributed to this? There are several conclusions to be drawn from
the strategies, international and local evaluations of the international journalism training courses.
There are some good results from the training. A positive sign of inuence that can be linked to the training
seminars in Kosovar newsrooms is the individual awareness of professional journalism. In Andresen (2015)
journalists and editors expressed the kind of news they wanted to practice; they had a genuine desire to prac-
tice independent news production, to set the news agenda and not simply follow the politicians. However,
the journalists often failed in daily life to practice their desires because of several factors such pressure and
self-censorship. Furthermore, another important eect, especially during the early training, according to
the interviews with editors and journalists, was a reduction of hate speech in the media. There were serious
examples of hate speech that even led to the closure of a newspaper, Dita, in 2000 (Hoxha, 2007). Train-
ing, combined with OSCE establishing regulations against it was a crucial step against attacks on identied
people in some parts of the Kosovo Albanian press.
5 Also known as KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army).
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Volume 6 number 2 Journalism Education page 43
The training courses also raised the level of professional reporting techniques for many journalists. The
informants said they learned various methods of reporting in early training seminars. The ability to produce
a story from idea to published text improved after the trainings. However, the technical part of the training
is at the same time part of the criticism against the international media support. The journalists’ and editors’
feeling was that the international community was very good at supporting the local media with technical
equipment (especially RTK) and the technical side of reporting.
The international trainers failed to a large degree to address professionalization of journalism as a counter-
strike to media patrimonialism (Waisbord, 2013). The historically close ties between media and politicians
dominate media history in Kosovo. The ‘old’ mindset of political discourse is present in the newsrooms and,
according to editors, the international trainers could and should have addressed this in the training. How-
ever, they failed to address this question, partly because they had no strategy to systematically inuence
this discourse. This can be blamed on both lack of historical-political knowledge and apprehension to deal
with the complicated political discourse, which is much more complex than a question of conict between
Albanians and Serbs (Di Lellio, 2006; Bieber & Daskalovski, 2003; Duijzings, 2000; Andresen, 2015).
Through a study of media support strategies, international evaluations and local evaluations by the re-
cipients of the training, it can be concluded that professionalisation of journalists has only to a limited de-
gree been shaped by the journalism training oered by the international community in Kosovo (Andresen,
2015). The positive outcome of the training linked to professionalization was that the journalists attending
the training became conscious about the potential of professional journalism and learned various reporting
techniques. Second, the focus on reducing hate speech in Kosovar media also bore results. Furthermore,
the international community’s support and donations contributed to upgrading technical equipment. Thus,
professionalism has developed on some levels.
However, on a more fundamental level of development of journalists, it seems evident that the interna-
tional journalism training courses oered after the war failed for the following reasons: rst, the training
failed to address the signicance of the historical-political context and its eect on journalism in Kosovo.
Thus, the training did not adequately deal in depth with the historical links between politics and the media
(Waisbord, 2013). Too much focus was put upon importing western journalism philosophies and reporting
techniques without addressing the deeper challenges the media faced. Second, the training missed the op-
portunity to take advantage of the already professional aspirations and practice that several of the journalists
and editors had attained through the 1990s, especially during the 1998-1999 war when working as xers for
international reporters. Third, the trainers did not seem to be sensitive to the risky environment of reporting
in Kosovo after the war. The pressure from politicians, possible threats, self-censorship, low payments and
risks of losing their jobs were issues that were not amply addressed in the training.
These risk factors made it dicult to practice the lessons learned in the training when the trainees returned
to their newsrooms. Furthermore, the chaotic disorganization of the training in the rst years also reduced
the potential of impacting the training on the professional level of journalism in Kosovo. There was little
coordination between the trainers; the selection of trainees was to a large degree coincidental and very often
young and inexperienced journalists attended the trainings.
They had little chance or motivation to change the practice of their newsrooms to which they returned. The
journalists and editors admitted that their motivation for the training was at times low, and that their input
was lower than it could have been. They also took some of the blame for the failures of the training sessions.
When they felt that the training courses were not what they had expected, or even irrelevant, their motiva-
tion sank and they attended the trainings often only out of duty. Finally, it is signicant to note that the train-
ing sessions that the journalists said had worked best were either in-house training, where the trainers visited
the newsrooms or the training programmes where the journalists were able to learn in a newsroom abroad.
Findings: Assessing today’s journalism in transitional Kosovo
The triangulation of data from previous research of one of the authors for his doctoral research of the
newsrooms of Kosovar media, the data gathered from the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) and the analy-
sis of curriculums of education institutions in Kosovo along with the interviews with journalism teaching
instructors in Kosovo suggest that one of the crucial developments is that Kosovo is developing its own
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Page 44 Journalism Education Volume 6 number 2
model of media that is based primarily in the western model of pluralism but with the local hint of both
inuences from the past as well as from the journalism education that is currently being done in both public
and private schools. The education touches upon the issues of human rights and freedoms in relation to Ko-
sovo situation specically from where the ethics derives into the curriculums that are being taught at schools
but to some extent that teaching fades away once journalists are on the job.
Media model and journalist co-habitat with politics
Kosovar journalists struggle in their working environment in many levels but one of the more important
struggles is the demand for change in last few decades. Although many of working journalists are too
young to remember last changes of the 1990s, the profession of journalists has never caught on as a well-
respected position in society mainly because of cultural reasons of being part of politics but lately also
because of many journalists switching sides adhering to political parties and public relations positions and
above all mostly because of historic reasons of journalists cohabiting with politics under the rule of com-
munist Yugoslavia and party/state media model that engulfed journalistic pieces being cleared by the more
senior members of the party appointed in the editorial rooms for example in the case of Rilindja6 but also
throughout the so called ‘parallel system’ where news outlets such as ‘Bujku7’ was based upon the model
of cohabitating with party politics. In mid 1990s, with the establishment of Koha Ditore, journalists started
slowly nding themselves into new territories with more pluralist media and after the major changes in 1999
in post-conict Kosovo, media emerged in a new pluralistic environment.
In post-conict Kosovo, a challenge for the Kosovar society was to establish politically independent me-
dia and the international community (namely OSCE) established the rst public broadcaster channel, RTK
which was publicly funded until 2009 and after that it continued as state funded broadcaster where its budg-
et is allocated by the National Assembly of Kosovo. This is very important to the journalists and inuences
as journalists in Kosovo perceive their role as activist and agenda setter with around 74.9% of respondents
saying that it is extremely and very important to educate the audience and 38.2% of journalists declaring
that they have to set the political agenda. Furthermore, one of the important ndings which corresponds with
interviews as well is the low degree of trust of journalists in the political elite and high prioritization of jour-
nalists to play an adversary role on the government. Only 2.1% of journalist declared that they completely
trust or had a great deal of trust in politicians in general with 74.5% claiming that it is extremely important
or very important to serve as an adversary to the government (WJS).
Kosovar journalists are looking at the ‘Euro-American’ model of journalism by claiming that it is very im-
portant to report things as they are but also take things in hands by themselves in lack of trust in politicians
(Andresen et.al., 2017). Struggling to adapt to changes in the media model and the role they have in society,
journalists adapt to the market needs along with their perception of what is important to report. Kosovo
is creating its media model that stands between independent and pluralist media that checks and balances
between politics, media and society.
Journalists and human rights
In post-conict Kosovo, human rights trainings poured in from top down approach throughout all institu-
tions, schools and even primary schools but always explained through a vertical impose of such values. One
of the interviewees for this article recalls that while working for an international organization to provide
trainings and advice for Kosovar media, they encountered situations where human rights programmes sug-
gested by the organization for the local media was received with skepticism by journalists claiming that they
do not have minority communities and hence they did not need human rights programmes in their air time.
The highlight on minority rights was always part of the training and education programmes for journalists
so it became a key word for the approach. Even today, human rights is synonymous with minority rights
in the eyes of journalists. A lecturer at one of the private universities claims that most students are not very
interested in the subjects of human rights because it is not attractive enough and is so overly covered by the
demands of international organizations such as UN and OSCE in Kosovo. Another lecturer claims similarly
but adds that the inuence of oral traditions in Kosovar society is far more important than literacy and criti-
cal discourse and this is what inuences journalistic outcome in the media. Both informants in this argument
6 Rilindja as main newspaper in Kosovo until 1990s when it was closed down
7 A LDK/QIK founded newspaper called Bujku (The Farmer) which later was used as political media outlet.
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Volume 6 number 2 Journalism Education page 45
have a deeper knowledge of Kosovar journalist education system.
As previously noted, Most Kosovar journalists have gone through trainings sponsored by international
organizations. In the judgement of the IMC8 in 2004, it was demanded that the RTK spends 250 thousand
euros training journalists in the aftermath of bad reporting on the events which caused violence. The OSCE
report claims that: “the media, specically the broadcasting sector, displayed unacceptable levels of emo-
tion, bias, carelessness, and falsely applied “patriotic” zeal. (OSCE, 2004)” Ever since 2004, journalists are
constantly invited in trainings organized by the IREX, OSCE, UN, EU and other organizations but often
without a proper needs assessment and a bottom approach. One of the interviewed lecturers conrms the
criticisms (in Andresen, 2015) that these trainings had little success because of overloading such trainings
with irrelevant curricular cases and little practical and local knowledge.
Journalism curriculums and ethics
The curriculums of journalism education in Kosovo are struggling to adopt needs and change in accord-
ance with the new political and technological demand. Several reasons are serving as a barrier to this change
and one of them is that teaching plans must be accredited every three years and new subjects cannot be
brought in without agreement by the Kosovo Accreditation Agency (KAA). Furthermore, the current cur-
riculums are mainly focused on academic strand of journalism with little practical subjects. Especially in
the eld of ethics, the focus remains in the level of media regulation, law and theoretical ethics although
the public university stands out with organizing debates and guest lecturers from the regulatory bodies of
media in Kosovo and from the civil society. The overall journalistic education in Kosovo remains politics
oriented with the focus on government, political communication, and a misbalance in favor of public rela-
tions and communications versus journalism and ethics. The oered programmes in Kosovar schools are in
all three levels of studies (BA, MA and PhD) but having reviewed the curriculums that are advertised in the
web pages, we can see how little attention is given to the ethics and media regulation and how much more
is given to the politics and literature (Albanian literature, genres of journalism etc.). Ethics is oered in the
BA level of studies for only one semester whereas no ethics course is oered in the MA level neither in the
public university courses nor in the private colleges.
Journalism curriculum as business intelligence
It has been unexpectedly noted that often universities avoid transparency in their public records with
regard to who is teaching which subjects. Normally, universities only publish subjects without names of in-
structors in their web pages and that could be dierent from ocial documents in the KAA. When KAA was
contacted to receive ocial copies of accredited curriculums taught at universities in Kosovo, they refused
to give away such information under the pretence that it was valued as “intellectual property of the submit-
ters (i.e. Universities) to the KAA and therefore could not be distributed” for the third parties. This is an in-
dication of the attempts to not report and advertise the course list as accredited because it would most likely
not fulll the conditions for such accreditation. The institutional framework in Kosovo demands faculties
for each accredited education programmes to have at least three lecturers with completed doctoral studies.
Conclusion
As journalists and media in Kosovo have passed through multi-level changes from authoritarian to plu-
ralistic models of functioning in constant change and struggle, journalism education has never been stable
and steady. Over the last decade, new journalism schools have been founded both in public and private
sector which reects signicant increase in quality reporting. Nevertheless, technology, globalization, rapid
development of social media leave much to be desired in the journalism education in Kosovo which lacks
European and international aspects of journalism teaching and approaches.
Furthermore, the past conict events of the destruction of Yugoslavia haunts present day journalism in
challenging human rights, ethics and even business models of Kosovar media. The traumatic past, conict
8 International Media Commissioner, now Independent Media Commissioner in Kosovo
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Page 46 Journalism Education Volume 6 number 2
and ethnic animosity is still present in the public discourse among Kosovar journalists because of political
resistance of the leadership of the entire region to take steps towards recognizing conicting past and the
atrocities that happened. Journalists feel like they are very much part of the struggle and along with that,
they have a role to reveal ‘the truth’ to what has happened to the past. Historic jargons characterise present
coverage of reporting when ethnic minorities are in the scope as a reminder of bitter past.
One of the ways to overcome such challenges of the past is transitional justice and along with that in the
eld of media is transitional journalism as argued largely in this paper. Such idea puts journalism in perspec-
tive of transitional justice and looks at the problems from a human rights approach including the education
of journalists in the eld of human rights but instead of learning from top down approach of what is glob-
ally needed, the learning programmes would be from the bottom up approach of starting from local cases of
media coverage of human rights violations and abuse and how to solve them.
As one of the signicant gaps in the teaching of journalism in Kosovo is in relation to dealing with the past,
lack of taught courses for journalists entering the media market is seen as a weakness of the education sys-
tem in Kosovo along with other structural problems in the media. The data shows journalistic roles shifting
from traditional watchdog to activist role which challenges the journalistic profession and aspired objectiv-
ity in fair reporting. Such shift is related to the lack of trust in the institutions for the reasons of institutional
corruption and misconduct, non-transparency and lack of access to information. Journalists want to take
matters in their hands by actively participating in decision making, causes and even advocacy by teaming
with non-governmental sector in attempt to change policies and the situation. Here, non-governmental sec-
tor plays a crucial role because it is more trusted due to its eectivity.
As Kosovo is a transitional society where institutional and social change have moved from authoritarian
regime through conict and post-conict into the current stage where journalists are dening their own role
in society vis a vis other institutions responsible for the country development and progress. In absence of
both desirable development and progress, journalists are willingly taking more responsibilities into their
own hands. In this regard, also the current higher education system in Kosovo that provides young journal-
ists to the market is in its infancy when it comes to journalism education. It fullls basic needs for journal-
ism programmes but is dominated by traditional thinking and focus. The article sheds light on the need for
practical tailored training that provides hands on knowledge that combines realities of political pressure,
history and the transition for better success.
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