Letter From the "Other" Balkans: Free at Last?   

After years of state control, print and broadcast media are reinventing themselves in Albania, Romania and Bulgaria.

Much has been written about the struggles of the media in the former Yugoslavia. But what is happening elsewhere in the Balkans? Is a free press emerging in the wake of the collapse of communism in Albania, Romania and Bulgaria? A firsthand look reveals that it is a transition with many challenges.

Albania is the poorest country in Europe, a place where babies are left alone on the sidewalk with currency scattered around them in hope of attracting alms. Its 3.3 million people suffered perhaps the most bizarre of the Communist dictatorships that plagued Eastern Europe for 45 years after World War II. Mercurial dictator Enver Hoxha broke with the Soviet Union to align his nation with China, then rejected the Chinese and decided to go it alone.

So great was his paranoia that he scattered 700,000 concrete bunkers throughout the country, reminders that he fully expected a NATO invasion. After the liberation, a billion dollars were found in 155 underground offices.

Recovery from this dictatorial nightmare has not been easy, but elections have been held and the antiCommunist Democrats have taken power, with their leader, Sali Berisha, elected president. But the transition has hardly been seamless. There have been charges that the opposition was roughed up at election time, and the Socialists (nee Communists) pulled out of the parliamentary contest in May at the last minute.

The media scene has exploded since liberation.

ðhe monolithic and stultifying press of the Hoxha days was replaced with remarkable speed by 250 magazines and newspapers. But the government has imposed heavy taxes on circulation, as well as a value-added tax on newsprint and advertising.

ýntimidation has also reared its head. After a bomb exploded in neighboring Macedonia, an Albanian reporter warned of possible "explosions" of corruption in his own country. When a deadly explosion occurred in the Albanian capital, the reporter was arrested.

In another incident, police went to the offices of the leading newspaper, KOHA JONE, and arrested all 33 staff members, without presenting warrants. Editor Aleksander Frangaj was later fined $1,000 for allowing the publication of a "false report." Journalists have been roughed up as well. In January 1996, six KOHA JONE delivery trucks were confiscated.

Pay at Albanian newspapers is extremely low, as little as $70 a month, and some reporters work for two papers at once. Per-story fees to supplement wages guarantee that there is little investigative reporting; it's too time-consuming. And taxes and distribution costs make breaking even a Herculean task.

The electronic media, unable to get a law passed that would guarantee pluralism, include "pirate stations" that operate illegally, often in wonderfully imaginative ways. American Rich McClear, who until recently worked for the International Research and ýxchange program, talks about "Radio Hot" in the small city of Patos. The studio consists of a two-room flat, a small mixer, a boom box, a turntable, a phone patch and an auto-reverse tape. Programming is "Albanian lite" – folk music, a call-in show, some news, and Christian shows on the weekends. The rent is paid by the Democratic Party of President Berisha, and most income comes from announcements like weddings and birthdays. The best monthly gross so far: $200.

The owner of a pirate cable TV station that reaches into the suburbs of Tirana flashes a picture of himself and Berisha when asked about his license to operate. Plagued by slow-to-pay subscribers, he broadcasts their names.

The impetus to continue the struggle in such Wild West circumstances comes from the belief that people will get used to these operations and would protest were they to be closed down. And if a media law is ever passed, pirate operators expect they are likely to receive licenses.

I had met President Berisha in Washington, and my request for an interview resulted in an invitation to lunch. A tall, handsome man reminiscent of Robin Williams, he greeted us in a nicely appointed state guest house located in a huge city park that contains the graves of British officers killed while fighting Axis occupiers during World War II. I began by asking him how he viewed the way Albania is depicted in the U.S. press. He replied with a laugh, "I thought we were here to ask about the Albanian press!"

Berisha said that in the old days of the dictatorship, Albanian journalists exhibited little skill, which was understandable since all they reported was propaganda. Making a comparison with his own diplomatic corps, he recalled that he had fired 94 percent of the holdovers from the Communist regime, for the same reason.

"The press shouldn't be on the side of power, but on the other side," he said. "The Herald [an Albanian newspaper] must not be touched, though they opposed me... I told our politicians that to battle with journalists is stupid." He mentioned that existing law requires that errors in reporting about politicians be corrected by weekly, but not daily, publications. "There is no censorship office and there never will be," he added.

Are different papers charged different prices by the government-owned printing press? I asked. "Categorically no," he said. Will there be private TV some day? "Definitely."

As to the future, I would guess that the print press will undergo a good bit of consolidation, and that the "pirate" radio and TV will eventually become legalized. Berisha may have been acting when he made his pro-press freedom remarks, but I doubt it.

Bucharest surprised me. Its broad avenues and trees, its arches and monuments, and its wild traffic were reminiscent of Paris, but Paris without paint, for it is, after decades of Communist tyranny, sadly shabby. About the size of Oregon, Romania has some 23 million people. The pace of economic reform has been slow, and the rate of inflation high, but the politics are lively. Since the fall of the vicious megalomaniac Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, some 200 parties have been formed, though only 12 are currently represented in Parliament.

In 1994 Freedom House rated Romania's press as partly free. Since "damaging the reputation of a public official" and spreading "false information capable of undermining Romanian national security" are punishable by up to five years in prison, one might think that Freedom House is perhaps understating the case. Nonetheless, freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Romanian constitution.

A disturbing court case is that of Iliescu vs. Ziua , a major daily. Two of the paper's reporters were charged with slandering former President Ion Iliescu when they wrote that, years ago, he had been recruited by the KGB while he was a student in Moscow. The matter has not yet been decided by the courts.

Distribution and newsprint are major problems. Train service to the rural areas is slow, as is the postal service. When the state-owned paper factory closed for repairs last year, newspapers had to rely on costly foreign suppliers. Still, the print scene is vigorous, with some 900 papers and magazines competing for readers. (One reporter told me that in Romania, everyone wants a mistress and a newspaper.)

A satirical paper called Academia Catavencu recently took on the influential American ambassador, Alfred Moses, for being too close to the Iliescu administration, claiming Moses had not even met with Iliescu's successful rival for the presidency. The article smacked of anti-Semitism in the eyes of many. (Ambassador Moses is Jewish and in the Communist days had been active as a private citizen in helping Romania's once large Jewish community migrate to Israel.)

The electronic media scene is promising. The state radio and TV dominate, and TV in particular is musty and dull – and pro-government. But competition from the private sector is burgeoning, with some 110 private radio stations and 39 TV stations. A company called ProTV, whose news programming the New York Times has called "fast and fresh," has passed RTV, the government station, in viewership in Bucharest and is about to do the same in other large cities. RTV's news is a hangover from the Communist era, concentrating on reports on the president's schedule, factory production and other "old think" topics that people tired of long ago.

Cable TV is popular, as is foreign radio: The Voice of America has 15 affiliates in the country and the BBC has 60. The BBC has been accused of favoring the opposition in the 1996 elections; its reporter in Cluj received threatening phone calls, and the national media watchdog agency banned state TV from carrying BBC programming.

The quality of journalism in Romania is not high, as local editors admit and lament. Poor writing, "facts" that aren't, bad spelling and frequent retractions detract from the media's credibility. But considering that there were no journalism schools in the country before 1989, the lack of professionalism is not surprising. A Reuter employee told the United States Information Service that the error rate in Romanian newspapers is about 50 percent in reporting on foreign topics.

I called on the national media watchdog, the CNA (the Romanian version of the FCC), and its chairman, Mircea Moldovan, a bearded man in his 50s. He likened the nation's electronic media since the revolution to "a bottle of champagne: It goes out without control; it's good, but it stains." CNA's goal is to monitor programs, he says, "but that doesn't mean censorship." The agency wants to know the percentages of music, movies and particularly locally produced programming, a nationalistic concern of many European countries. A CNA rule forbids political advertising after 10 p.m.

Ambassador Moses arranged an interview with then-President Iliescu, who was in the midst of a tough reelection campaign. A well-tailored and good-looking man with silvery hair, Iliescu's comments were similar to those of Albania's Berisha in that he stressed the need for professionalism among journalists. He compared the situation in today's Romania to that of the United States in the 19th century, as people discover a new world, a world denied them during the long years of Ceausescu. "In this country," he laughed, "there are more journals than journalists!" He echoed the oft-heard call for journalistic responsibility.

We drove from Bucharest to Sophia and saw firsthand the sad state of the infrastructure in both Romania and Bulgaria, where, on rutted highways, horse carts competed with cars. The faded capital of the 8.5 million Bulgars might be beautiful were it to enjoy a face-lift, an unlikely prospect given the nation's crumbling economy.

Our first interview was with Radoslav Radev, head of Radio Darik, a private radio group rated number one in Sophia and second nationally. Radev bubbled with enthusiasm for the future of his enterprise and gleefully looked forward to competing with the state-owned network, which he called "not free." His seven stations are all local, broadcasting news/talk and adult contemporary music.

Since there is no limit to the number of stations one can own, he plans to add seven more, at which time his empire will cover 90 percent of the country and will be more than a match for the government network. His advertisers include banks, insurance companies, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, restaurants and car dealers.

At a USIS-arranged roundtable I asked a group of journalists if they were comfortable in their work. Representatives from the state-owned media grumbled, but the private-sector people at first seemed moderately content. As they warmed to the subject, however, fears and complaints tumbled out. A print reporter pointed out that the economic crisis made things very difficult. Ninety percent of printing materials are imported, and with the lev (the local currency) in the tank, magazines and papers are forced to sell for twice what they should, sharply depressing circulation. The ad market is also depressed, and outside investors are badly needed. A lack of capital will keep Bulgaria from entering the digital world, one journalist complained, adding, "How do we get the necessary equipment?"

Another print person said that most "journalists" really aren't very professional. "We'll do anything to keep our jobs. The boss looks for people who can be controlled. It's prostitution. And we've abused freedom of the press; you can write anything you want. They write vulgar slang just because consumers like it. But we have a responsibility to the people." Should the government-owned electronic media be privatized? "No, not entirely. It is not in the European tradition." Another complaint: The government promised to remove the 18 percent value-added tax on the press. Did it? "No! They raised it to 22 percent!"

At the government-owned Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, the nation's version of AP or Reuters, "it's an uphill battle," agency head Atanas Matev said. Subscribers are sometimes slow to pay, the economy is in crisis, and older hands in the agency are not in favor of privatization. But, he added, he gets no pressure from the government and, in reality, the wire service has been capitalist since the state stopped its subsidy 35 years ago.

A bright spot was a magazine called "CEGA," similar to Time or Newsweek. Though well laid out with excellent use of color, its cost keeps circulation down to 6,000 a week. Editor Valeri Zaprianov, a former TV and newspaper executive, said that in 1990 journalists were "drunk with freedom." Under communism, he said, journalists were careful to quote accurately, but under democracy that has changed. "Today it seems people think democracy means disregarding the rules. They don't understand that democracy means following the rules. We abused people's trust, and now they don't trust us."

During our stay former Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov was buried, murdered by an assassin's bullets as he left his home for work. The national reaction was not unlike that of Americans after the assassination of President Kennedy.

I called on parliamentary speaker Blagovest Sendov the afternoon of the funeral. Lukanov had been a friend of Sendov and a fellow Socialist, but Sendov's shock went beyond the personal. That day a tabloid paper called Night Work ran a picture on its front page of the late prime minister lying naked on the autopsy table.

"In Bulgaria you have a terrible, terrible freedom which hurts," he said. "I met with the papers after Lukanov was killed and asked them not to fuel the situation, please not to make conjectures at election time. I talked with all the political leaders as well. We agreed unanimously that there would be no cancellation of the election. Yet the press did not run the leaders' declaration. They published that picture!

"There is a terrible misunderstanding of the role of the press," he continued. "We went from total control under the Communists, when every presidential speech was printed totally, to this. Night Work is like an addiction: It's easy to addict people who haven't tried a drug. And if we try to do something we will be killed by publicity."

Later, I met with Tosho Toshov, head of Media Holdings, the conglomerate that owns Night Work and several other papers. A chain-smoking man dressed in a sports jacket, he told how the paper once belonged to labor unions but had been bought by a group of employees after the fall of the Communist government. Asked if the approach of Night Work wouldn't in the long run result in calls for censorship, he scoffed, "The ruling party is looking for reasons to war on the independent media." He expressed reservations about running the Lukanov picture, but added, "It's all hysteria against an independent press. The government blames the press for low salaries, for inflation, for everything."

I asked if the company's papers ever made political endorsements. No, he replied, but they might support a bill before the parliament or take a position in a local matter. Parties may buy ads, he said, but his journalists refuse to write them. I didn't understand. He made himself clear by showing me a page in the day's paper. It looked just like all the other pages, but it was a paid political advertisement – not, to be sure, written by his staff. The cost was twice that of an ad clearly identified as paid.

Asked if pressure were ever applied to keep companies from advertising in his papers, he claimed that "mighty and incorrect political pressure" was brought to bear, as state-owned companies were urged to shun his group and use party-owned papers instead.

Are the media free? Partly, says Freedom House, though they are proscribed from "incitement to violence against anyone" and expressing opinions that are "an encroachment on public decency or acting to the detriment of the rights and reputation of others."

Journalism in Bulgaria is not necessarily of the highest quality. "If they quote you accurately, you're lucky," says USIS' Richard Mei, adding that Bulgarian journalists have little knowledge of the basic tenets of journalism. Perhaps Bill Woestendiek, an American editor working in Bulgaria on a code of ethics for the country's radio, summed up the country's press scene best: "The country is so passive. If things happened in the United States as they happen in Bulgaria, there would be riots in the streets."

No report on the Balkan media would be complete without a word about American financier George Soros. He is everywhere. The Soros Foundation established a training center for journalists in Albania. Its office in Romania bought newsprint in the early '90s to keep the newly free newspapers running, and it has tried – without notable success – to create a national distribution system; its current budget is $11 million in Romania alone. The head of Soros' Romanian office, Lazar Vlasceanu, is optimistic about the future: "There's no stopping the press being free. The forces against a non-democratic regime are very strong."

So what should one make of the Balkan stew? First, there is no guarantee that democracy and press freedom will triumph; the habits of 45 years are hard to break. And even when the print press is quite free, there is a great reluctance by both Democrats aüd former Communists (now generally calling themselves Socialists and claiming to be converts to economic liberalism) to permit competition with the government-owned electronic media, particularly TV. The freedom of the print press has been enjoyed so exuberantly that it verges on license, and a reaction in the form of restrictions and censorship is possible. Finally, censorship is not the only danger to a free press; taxes, harassment, other subtle – and not so subtle – acts can accomplish the same end.

That said, I think Vlasceanu is probably right: It will be hard to stop freedom. For one thing, people like it. No one I talked to thought that there would ever be a return to the old ways. For another, the tidal pull of the European Community and NATO is great. There is a desperate desire to be associated with the West and its institutions, and a return to the dark practices of the past would not promote that end. Events in Russia, to be sure, will affect this area; they always have. But with a little bit of luck things may just work out.