The Albanian government has given exclusive access to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s ERTV to prepare a short documentary on the pandemic situation inside the COVID-19 hospitals in the country.
The resulting work, called “Exclusively, from the Firefront”, a carefully edited documentary about 40 minutes long, was broadcast by Rama on his social media in three consecutive days. It was also published by most mainstream media and online portals as news.
It appeared to show nearly perfect conditions in hospitals, with patients expressing their gratitude for the government care and generosity, while a touching soundtrack played in the background.
Rama said the documentary showed the reality in hospitals, which is “completely different” from that shown by the opposition “barking dogs with no religion and no faith”.
Albania has seen an almost constant increase in new cases and deaths in the last two months, which has prompted the opposition to denounce the crisis management, claiming that it is leading to the collapse of the health system, with patients being kept in ambulances due to lack of beds in hospitals.
Rama denied the accusations, while the documentary also showed empty beds in hospitals.
Euronews Albania was one of the media that chose not to broadcast sequences of the carefully edited documentary, and pressed the prime minister on why he let his own television to film patients and hospital premises.
Replying to Euronews’ inquiry on Wednesday, Rama justified the exclusive access given to his ERTV by the government’s need to fight fake news.
“The media has been given access before with special authorizations, this is not something impossible. We had to broadcast this information seeing how much fake news and how much misinformation there is out there,” Rama stated.
The Albanian prime minister has stated that one of the people working for ERTV is a Socialist Party youth branch volunteer who is paid by the party for his work, and that maintaining the TV channel bears no cost for Rama or the government.
Correction: In the original version of this article, it was incorrectly stated that:
“The Albanian prime minister has suggested that those who work for his ERTV do it voluntarily, and that maintaining the TV channel bears no cost for him or the government.”
He has actually stated that one of the persons working for ERTV volunteers for the Socialist Party youth branch, and is paid by the party for his work.
