Clowns and journalists

By Lutfi Dervishi 

On World Press Freedom Day, we must remember that today we are all journalists. Anyone who has a camera phone and a sense of protagonism, if not a journalist, is a clown.

Today is the day to remember that we are in a new era. Just as the Stone Age ended, not because the stones ended, the journalism that existed, even though it is full of paper, is also over.

Today, there is no time for events to be verified, analyzed, or edited. A "live" without context, without responsibility, is enough, and you have created "news".

Meanwhile, the journalist, the real one who checks the facts, verifies the sources, and asks himself before publishing, today looks like a character from a museum.

Yesterday the battle was between truth and lies. Today, the battle is much more hopeless: it's truth against the viral, against emotions, against the algorithm that tells you: you have me, you don't need to think.

Today, the question is not: do I have the right to speak?, but "is anyone listening to me?"

In this digital cacophony, where everyone has their own voice, it is not the one who has the most to say who is heard, but the one who shouts the loudest.

Whoever verifies, argues, analyzes is behind the times.

If once the media was the window that connected the citizen to the world, it was the filter that cleaned information, today it is becoming the smoked glass of the machine of power, that only lets you see what the driver wants!

Today we have opinion as religion and fact as myth. Instead of facts forming opinions, we have opinions that tremble and tremble until they find "facts" that justify them. And if facts are not found, they are fabricated. (If not, let them be fabricated.)

Today, on Press Freedom Day, when the powers that be (once controlled by the media) report on themselves, the question that naturally arises is: does the profession of journalism make sense anymore, when everyone is a "journalist"?

Without a free and professional media, power becomes a podcaster, criticism is replaced with jokes, press conferences with reels, and the truth with "stories."

A country without a media that verifies and controls is like a house without windows, where you can survive for a while, but you will suffocate from the mold of propaganda.

The media can survive, even thrive, even in this age of algorithms, but only if it transforms from a competitor for attention to a guarantor of truth; only if it makes an alliance with the audience, not with the politician or the virtual clowns who go viral.

Freedom of the media is not a Facebook status, but a daily challenge. The old challenge is as new: information, education, entertainment.

Yes, entertainment has been one of the media's duties, but salt and pepper are not the same. Entertainment at the expense of the truth means that the news is not the campaign, but Nafijet, Zeqinetë, Lajet! And in this case, it is not the audience's fault that confuses clowns with journalists.