FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti 
In Montenegro, newspapers are seeking emergency funds for survival, while in Albania the state is letting the press wither away amid propaganda and indifference...
While in Montenegro, three of the country's oldest newspapers; Vijesti, Dan, Pobjeda, are asking the state for emergency funds for survival, in Albania the survival of print media has turned into a silent competition for help, where the bill is never shared, but it is often said "let them close, who reads them anymore?".
But this is not an argument. It is an excuse for indifference.
Across the region, print media are facing the same crisis: declining circulation, low advertising revenue, and a state that invests more in its own propaganda than in protecting independent voices. If the state used to threaten journalists with lawsuits and fines, today it simply leaves them bankrupt.
In Albania, with the exception of a few surviving titles, the daily press has become a luxury. Distribution is in agony, points of sale are disappearing, while the government has no support mechanism for newspapers; no fiscal incentives, no subsidy policies, no funds for the local press.
These are not handouts. They are investments in pluralism. Because when a newspaper closes, it's not just a business that closes. A critical window for society closes.
The demands being raised in Montenegro are not a Balkan exception, they are a common alarm for all the fragile democracies of the region. If clear political and fiscal measures are not intervened to preserve a free press, then tomorrow we will not need censorship. The lack of support will be enough for the voice to die out on its own.
Albania does not need another propaganda board. It needs a fund to protect media pluralism. For a policy that does not distribute state advertising as a reward for servility, but as support for professionalism. It needs an approach that serves the citizen, not the government.
Newspapers are not papers. They are memories. They are mirrors. They are a living archive of a society that has the right to speak, to criticize, to remember. If we let them close, we are no longer citizens of a democracy, we are spectators of its decline./ Pamphlet
Lini një Përgjigje