Xhemajl Rexha: Kosovo journalism is about protecting freedom of speech and fighting disinformation

The main challenges for the media in the Republic of Kosovo in 2024 were the oppression of freedom of speech, the spread of disinformation and Kremlin propaganda in the Western Balkans, as well as the fight for the rights of journalists. This was stated by the head of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo (AJK), Xhemal Rexha, in an interview with The Geopost. As an independent journalist and leader of the professional community, he cooperates with international organizations and media. He headed the Association in July 2021, and this year he was re-elected to this position for the second time.

Full interview:

The Geopost: What was the main event in 2024 in the life of the Kosovo journalistic association and for you as head of this organization?

Xhemajl Rexha: Thank you very much for having me Ludmila and thank you to The Geopost. I want to thank everyone here, including Gynen for starting The Geopost in Ukrainian. I think it’s going to have a very good contribution in fighting disinformation and Russian propaganda in our region. This is a great initiative and I’m happy to be here with you.

2024 has been a very busy year for journalists in Kosovo. A lot of things have happened, we’ve had a lot of events going on. Most of them are still linked to what happens in the north of Kosovo. But we also had very important events in Pristina and elsewhere in the country. Journalists in Kosovo were able to report on very important issues about important decisions that were taken by the government and how they affect the lives of everyday’s people. It was a series of events. Unfortunately, this was a year where some killings of women happened. So, it was in a sense a sad year as well. But Kosovo journalists have done their best work and that’s why we also awarded plenty of them just at the end of this year for the very important work they do.

The Geopost: This year you were awarded the Harry Morgan Fellowship award. What does it mean to you?

Xhemajl Rexha: This award was part of a fellowship in which I was chosen to participate in the US. I was there this year in September – October and some days of November. This is a World Press Institute Fellowship which brings some journalists from different countries. One of the participants was from Ukraine. It brings some journalists to experience America and we experience the elections in the US as they are held. We discussed a lot of AI, about how artificial intelligence is going to impact the work of journalists and the media in the future, how we should impress and take the best out of AI. The award that I won was an honorary award which is named after the founder of this fellowship Harry Morgan. Obviously, it means a lot to me. Not personally, but because of Kosovo as a country. It was the first time ever that a journalist from Kosovo won this fellowship in the 60 years of its operation, so it was a very proud moment for me.

The Geopost: My congratulations! How do you assess the state of freedom of speech in Kosovo and in journalism today?

Xhemajl Rexha: It has a lot of challenges. Freedom of speech, freedom of media are guaranteed by Kosovo constitutions. We do have in place very good laws that the constitution itself protects the freedom of speech and freedom of media in Kosovo. But it comes with a lot of challenges we’ve seen during this year as well. A lot of attempts by the Kosovo government to suppress this freedom of speech and freedom of media unfortunately. The Association of Journalists of Kosovo constantly monitors and exposes different attacks, most of them being verbal attacks and coming online in forms of harassment and derogatory language against journalists. It has been compromised as a value because the government doesn’t like the reporting of Kosovo Media and journalists and especially women journalists here in Kosovo are the best investigative journalists. They did bring to light a few scandals of corruption in which a liberal government was involved. That’s why we have this campaign to discredit journalists which is very bad. Kosovo unfortunately dropped 19 places in the rankings of Reporters without borders this year and it was also because of the attempt last year of the government to shut down Kosovo’s biggest channel Klan Kosovo. So our call to the government is to allow the media and journalists to do their work freely without fear and without intimidation of the work they do because this is guaranteed by our constitution.

The Geopost: You mention a lot of challenges for Kosovo’s journalists. How does the Association supports them in this difficult time?

Xhemajl Rexha: We are always there for journalists. We have hundreds of members that are part of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo from different communities. We do a lot of trainings with them because we want to raise the capacity, especially of young journalists on different topics, and how to handle these topics responsibly.

But safety is a great concern of our organization. As we know in 2023 there were a lot of physical attacks in the north of Kosovo. We have protective vests and helmets for journalists, so they can report from places that seem dangerous. We try to take care of the security and safety of journalists. We do offer help with the OSCE mission in Kosovo. We do help journalists and offer free legal aid. A lawyer would help them when they are sued in the courts, or they have an issue with the courts. Our lawyer helps them bring those cases to the court. We would be there for journalists in all sorts of capacities if they need our help. So by organizing we have a lot of trainings in which we give our opportunities to young journalists to write about different topics.

This year we’ve done a lot of projects with UN women as well about gender sensitive reporting. Also we engage different communities, especially those from Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian. We discuss topics that have to do with the marginalized communities which I mentioned. A lot of services that we give to our members, and we are happy to be able to support them, because we are supported by the international community in Kosovo.

The Geopost: The Russian invasion of Ukraine significantly changed Ukrainian journalism. We understood that our profession became one of the most dangerous. In your opinion, is the war in Ukraine affecting journalism in the region, and if so, how?

Xhemajl Rexha: The war in Ukraine has been ongoing since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, and it has also changed the way that journalists are able to safely do their work in Ukraine and around Ukraine. It has come to the attention of journalists in the region, to do more of their jobs, in fact checking and fighting Russian propaganda.

We’ve seen since day one of the invasion that the Kremlin sponsored media have been trying to expand their presence in the region. We know that RT has opened an office in the TV station in Belgrade, Serbia and they are trying to influence the whole region. As you know most of the Balkans language is the same in terms of speaking Serbian, Croatian, Bosnia and Montenegro. So they are trying to have this influence. I think that journalists in the region are aware and are trying to do their best to fight this disinformation that comes from media and channels that are sponsored by the Russian state.

For us in Kosovo it is very unique to have you as Ukrainian journalists here. You have been giving a lot of contribution in fighting this propaganda and just the fact that you’ve been able to live safely in Kosovo for this year. It’s been a very special connection that Kosovo now has with Ukraine in us trying to help in any way we can for the war to finish and for Ukraine to be free. We’ve been doing that in the media sphere as well.

The Geopost: Thank you so much. Which initiatives, projects launched by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo do you consider more successful?

Xhemajl Rexha: We’ve had plenty of activities throughout the year. We marked May 3rd the International Press Freedom Day with an exhibition of cartoons about media freedom which was held at the Kosovo Museum, from cartoons from six different countries of Western Balkans. We’ve done other things, we finished by awarding best journalists in different topics. There was one new thing that happened today which was like a British embassy sponsored program, in which we had an exchange visit with the journalists from Northern Ireland. 10 Northern Ireland journalists went to Kosovo in August and 10 Kosovo journalists visited Belfast and Derry in Northern Ireland in September. This is a topic about reporting on a sensitive past conflict, which you will have to address when you return to Ukraine.

I thought that this was an amazing experience and opportunity for journalists from Kosovo to learn more about the conflict in Northern Ireland which finished in 98, and for them to be able to see what happened in Kosovo in 98 – 99. As a result of that we produced 10 articles which were co-authored by one journalist from Kosovo and one from Northern Ireland. They were able to work together to bring perspectives from both countries about how conflicts affect people and what’s the role of journalism. It was part of a peace journalism project, what’s the role of journalists to be able to report in a professional manner about conflict for your own country. I think this is something that Ukrainian journalists also can learn from, when they go back and have to report about what happened during the war there.

The Geopost: Totally agree, because the learning of the Kosovo’s and the Balkans experience of transitional justice is very relevant for Ukraine today. But let’s talk about the role of the digital media in modern journalism.  Do you see more opportunities or risks in this? And why?

Xhemajl Rexha: Of course, it’s so much easier to do journalism in these times of a revolution. You can do so much with just a telephone, and one journalist can be a journalist, an editor, and a camera operator itself. That’s why we also engage in mobile journalism in different trainings, courses and workshops with our young journalists and others about doing mobile journalism. We’ve seen cases of a BBC reporter doing her live shots with a telephone from the Netherlands. There are some risks that we should look at the benefits.

The benefits are huge because you can be in any part of the world, and be able to go live, and to write, send and edit reports with just one device. So it used to be obviously. And it’s very useful when it’s breaking news when something is happening when you don’t really have the time to sit down, and do editing, and other stuff.  I think there are so many benefits which everyone should use basically to do this mobile list of journalists.

The Geopost: There are many media in the world and they are born every day, especially the Telegram channels and social media. What do you think journalists can do to increase the audience’s trust in his media and this difficult situation?

Xhemajl Rexha: I think there’s a crisis in trust all around the world. Many people are trying to escape from the national media and don’t necessarily believe what they write, due to many different factors. Some of them are related to the fact that they have so many pages on Instagram and Facebook that are not media, but pretend to be media. They publish photos or videos which would in the first instance look like they are being made by professional journalists, and which are not the case. They are done to spread disinformation and to gain financially and economically.

I think the way for the media to build trust is by relying on the largest and most credible outlets. And then it’s just to continue the fight to be factual, to be accurate, not to spread misinformation, not to go after clickbait, after likes, after comments, but basically just have good content. When there is an exclusive or like an in-depth investigation, people will watch it. People will attend it.

For traditional media there is this challenge of keeping up with social media. You can not only rely on doing a TV story but you obviously have to work on putting the same story in different manners on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Because so many millions and millions of young people throughout the world including here in Kosovo would only see things on Tik Tok. So I think this media is good content. They have to make sure that they put it in a very attractive short way to get the attention of young people in the news channels of social media.

The Geopost: Indeed, professional journalists have a lot of jobs in these conditions. About you, if you could spend a day as any journalist in history who would you choose and why?

Xhemajl Rexha: I had the chance to explain this in the US during my fellowship. One of the reasons why I got into journalism was the war in Kosovo. I was only 13 years old as a child having to flee from my country during the war and having to become a refugee in the neighboring North Macedonia. From that time I’ve always been very much interested in news and kind of conflicts.

If I were any journalist I would be someone during the Kosovo war. I would like to be like a senior journalist that was reporting here in 98-99.

I can name a photographer Wade Goddard which we had the honor to have him this year in Kosovo. He is a famous photographer from New Zealand who lives in Croatia. He worked at the time for New York Times and Reuters. He took some of the most amazing pictures during the war. He helped just like with other journalists to give the sense to the world what was happening in Kosovo. He testified to the killing of thousands of civilians and the atrocities that were being done by the Serbia state in Kosovo. Because of his and other photos and reports the world was able to intervene and stop the war in Kosovo. So yeah, I would be a journalist during the Kosovo war in 98-99.

/The Geopost