The TV campaign and funeral

By Lutfi Dervishi

The May 11 elections are not only a litmus test for the 11 parties/coalitions, but are also heralding the tragic end of television as the fourth power.

Ten days before the election silence and eleven days before voting day, Prime Minister Rama has not appeared in any television studio. Zero. No debate, no, but no interview/conversation either. There is no reason. There is no need.

It's not just Rama who has chosen to abandon traditional media, it's television itself that has given up on its mission.

The campaign is no longer reported by journalists, but by the parties. Rama communicates with the public directly twice a week on Facebook and Instagram, through the column "Sy më sy". On weekends, with "Flasim", his personal podcast. What about the televisions? They rebroadcast. They copy-paste. They pretend to be making news and today they raise their hands up like a swimmer without water.

Are these the first elections where television is in a coma?

We have seen it over the past few weeks: a campaign without journalists on the ground, without studios with real protagonists and debates.

Televisions are turning into squeezed lemons ready to be thrown in the trash.

But the truth is even more bitter: televisions are not victims, they are collaborators. They lost their credibility by becoming megaphones of politics, serving power, instead of challenging it. TV squandered its trust when everyone from morning to morning "discovered" the conversations in the studio..., where the unemployed are asked how to be a prime minister and the pharaoh how to be a prophet.

What is a political show today? We take two "there", two "here", give them a glass of water and wait for the circus without acrobats. Big words, stale accusations, revolted with a remote control, but no ideas, no real clash of opinions, no debate where logic wins, no analysis, no comment to be had. Babble.

In such a turbulent environment, political leaders logically no longer need television. They do everything themselves: even the campaigns, they edit the videos themselves, they distribute them on social networks themselves, while television becomes simply a flat mirror that reflects only what the government wants to show.

The leader reports on himself. Journalists report on the leader.

It's a brutal fact: today, parties and candidates spend more money on advertising and presence on social media than on TV. Not so much because online platforms are cheaper, but because television has lost trust and consequently the power it once had!

In most news editions today, you see "news" that resemble sheep being sheared by a shepherd: "News" with the same perspective, with the same synchronicity, with the same headline, with the same narrative!

If anyone still intends to survive, there is only one way: to reject servility and regain the right to question, to embarrass, to demand accountability. To give up the fast-food talk show model and return to real journalism.

Either you sift through the promises and do your research, or you end up as a museum relic, a "decor" that comes from a time when words had weight and the media had power.

On the contrary, we must admit: the fourth estate is in clinical death. And the death is not coming from a brutal assassination. It is more of a suicide attempt. Slow. Shameful. Without any attempt at rescue.