TIRANA, Nov 18 /ATA/ The round table organized by the OSCE and the CEC “2025 Elections: The role of the media in the electoral process – challenges and opportunities” took place in Tirana on Monday.
This roundtable took place within the framework of the OSCE Presence in Albania project “Support for reform and the electoral process in Albania”, which is financed by Sweden, Switzerland, the US mission to the OSCE and Poland.
In attendance of the round table were the OSCE ambassador, Michel Tarran, the State Commissioner of Elections in Albania, Ilirjan Celibashi, representatives of civil society organizations and international organizations engaged in the elections, etc.
The head of the CEC Celibashi emphasized that “the media has a dual role to play, on the one hand its classic role of informing the monitoring of the process, on the other hand its main role is to inform, educate and encourage voters to be participants in the electoral process or in general in political processes”.
“In this case, it is important to say that the media will have to fulfill this goal or perform this dual functionality, characterized by two basic features, first is professionalism and second independence and impartiality. Both of these features are fundamental in general for the role of the media and for the action of the media, be it professionalism and impartiality and independence, but they become more important when it comes to the electoral process”, underlined Celibashi.
Celibashi said that “there are a number of mechanisms, which guarantee these two features of the media. But first, if this is not a self-regulated process, if the media itself does not have this approach, I think it is important to have a regulatory aspect”.
But, he added, when we talk about the need to regulate it, there is always fear and dilemma we will over-regulate media conduct or media activity.
“Therefore, we need to strike a balance between the need to regulate the media’s activity to a certain extent and the need to leave the media leeway to exercise its functions and responsibilities,” Celibashi emphasized.
However, Celibashi continued, it remains important that for any objective or subjective reason the media should not say something different from what they see and verify and not promote what they should not promote. Both of these come down to having a professional, unbiased and independent media.
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