Is Albania Ready for a New Media Model?

Albania inherited a media system with only a handful of state-owned media outlets controlled austerely by the communist party-state. Actually the political system and the society as a whole, and particularly, the media landscape have changed dramatically. Despite the variety of choices the numerous media outlets might seem to offer to a wider public audience, a series of factors, - including the lack of proper journalistic education, political polarization, and still a weak economy and relatively small media market - have hampered the development of a professional media system in Albania, which fails to measure up to any of the key dimensions of well-established western media models. Our analysis is largely based on the most important dimensions that might characterize (and influence) Albanian media systems, more specifically, the Albanian media system, in light of Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) work on comparative political communication. In view of their four key dimensions on media models analysis, Albanian press system clearly lags behind the indicators of most of the countries reviewed, especially in terms of its very low press circulation and readership figures, the severe financial burdens it is faced with; Albania press system clearly lags behind the indicators of most of the countries reviewed, especially in terms of its very low press circulation and readership figures, as well as the severe financial burdens it is faced with; Albanian news media fail in meeting adequate journalistic education and proper training standards; Albania is apparently needing to adopt a new model that could curb the Government’s and state’s potential intervention and attempts to control information. We would argue that Albania is closer to the model named ‘the Mediterranean,’ or ‘the Polarized Pluralistic Model,’ which relates to media systems in Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and France and we believe that it would be very interesting to explore whether adopting such a model would be a better solution for Albania’s media system.