It has been a long time since I had any interest in TV shows on any of the Albania channels. I’m sad to admit that I watch very little TV, or none at all.
The last few days, there was some news on the web about a “sexual scandal” that caught my attention.
Besides political news that serves the interest of the political class, the only other news that gets media and headline attention are cases of murder, tragic accidents, and rape. Skipping the real news and substituting it with crime news is a well known media tactic, especially during the summer season. Shocking news is used to distract the attention from news on the financial and economic situation, news about culture, or food safety.
For many days, this sex video has been on the focus of media outlets and TV headlines seen by the majority of poor Albanian families. This video was aired on “With an Open Heart,” a talk show on News 24 channel. The show is transmitted during the day and is watched by half of Albanian families. The intimate case of a family has been the main topic of recent discussion: the family’s poverty, its morals, and misfortune; the strained relationships between mother-in-law and bride, bride and sister-in-law, and the crisis of Albanian couples.
To put it shortly, in one of the shows, the father-in-law was invited and he described how his daughter-in-law cheated on his son, while the children were watching. Evis Ahmeti, the show’s author and host, is not only without value and doesn’t solve any problem of those sorry people whom bad fate has brought through the TV studio doors to fix their issues, but she even allows herself to pass moral judgment during the emission.
In the video the woman is shown undressed, we hear the insults of her sister-in-law, while it is clear that the brother-in-law hits the woman and the children are crying.
This is the conversation during the show:
E.A. : “…they are in bed, but the fact that they were caught in bed at the house of the person present in the studio, the father-in-law, makes it worse.”
Lawyer: “Even worse, she has brought shame to the home of her father-in-law, after this event social services should take away her children.”
E.A. “The mother can take her children and do with them as she pleases, but she is an unworthy mother to bring up them up.”
(later)
E.A. asks the lawyer : “Are these children in danger if they stay with the mother?”
Lawyer: “The children are in danger with their mother and grandfather. Social services must take them.”
E.A. “So you are saying that social services should take them, but it is better for them to stay with their family members.” (the discussion continues)
The actors of the scene are clearly seen. The verbal and physical violence against the woman and the interference with the privacy of the mother and her children are all clear. The sex scenes are shown during the day, when children are watching TV. The whole case and the comments have no public value and don’t need to be aired on TV. The ones discussing in the studio called the event “shameful,” but the video was not clearly showing the presence of the children. The woman’s privacy and dignity has been violated through psychological violence and and the threats that she will lose her children to her brother-in-law, her husband’s brother. This looks more like the stoning of a woman rather than a TV program.
The woman who has been physically, morally, and spiritually violated has threatened to kill herself and demands her family’s support. The father of the woman was present in the TV studio stating that she was young and her husband has lived apart from her for a long time.
As can be easily understood from the facts, this emission has nothing to do with journalism, nor with television.
Journalism, in its classical sense, refers to the work and activities of the journalist. Journalism is the way of being expressive in the press. The journalist writes in newspapers, or prepares news or reports for TV, the journalist informs through the written media, radio, TV, or online. The work of the journalist is to gather, verify, select, synthesize, and partially comment on the facts that will be shown to the public.
Before the journalist was very much related to the engaged author or person of letters. It is true that many known writers have a long and glorious story in journalism like Dino Buzzati, Ernest Hemingway, Emile Zola, Albert Camus, and Petro Marko among others.
Journalism and social sciences nourish a dimension that for many years has been missing in our country. They feed what may be called “democratic curiosities.”
It appears that today the journalist neither reports events or the democratic curiosities of the society, nor holds a moral stance judging the events that are happening. It appears that the journalist, today, is just drowning in the events.
Journalists must have the same professional consciousness as doctors, architects, and lawyers. They are responsible for the education of the public opinion, just like doctors are responsible for the health, lawyers for the truth, and so on.
From this viewpoint, the journalist as a political and social persona does not mingle with the militant, he stands on a different level because his “photograph” is not accompanied by an ideology in which he believes; on the contrary.
In fact the show “With an Open Heart” is a photograph of our society. Lately it has become years that TV has taken the place of missing and dysfunctional institutions. People go on TV to solve their property issues, their divorces, feuds, and other problems that they cannot solve in any other way. This is the reason to why everything is on TV. TV is not a show business anymore, it has become something much worse in Albania. TV is a point between sensational crime news and shameful and nasty shows that have nothing to do with anyone’s bedroom.
Issue can of course not be solved on TV. But through the TV we are confronted with what we cannot avoid, our own society,
