Between a rock and a hard place: Consequences of media clientelism for journalist–politician power relationships in the Western Balkans

Abstract

This comparative study examines the power relationship between journalists and political elites in South-Eastern Europe, emphasizing the clientelistic ties under which these interactions take place. It is based on 60 in-depth interviews with journalists from Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. The results suggest that the journalist–politician relationship in these countries has gradually evolved into two-way communication marked by cooperation and conflict. On one hand, the clientelist ties at the inter-organizational level have subordinated journalists to the political elites in power who negotiate the news agenda with media owners. On the other hand, journalists often serve as tools to combat political and economic enemies, leading to the exposure of corruption and scandals. However, this is done selectively, based on the media owner’s agenda. Overall, the study implies the lack of a uniform relationship between journalists and political elites, challenging previous assumptions that media clientelism in Eastern Europe is a stable system that exerts predictable relationships.

Keywords

Clientelism Eastern European media journalism autonomy media freedom post-communist media press–politics relations

It is a well-documented fact that political communication depends on the structural conditions of the political and media system in which it takes place (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Hallin and Mancini, 2004). However, most empirical knowledge on the relationship between journalists and political sources originates in Western countries with an Anglo-Saxon system, and a few studies (Stromback and Nord, 2006; Van Aelst et al., 2010) have explored this relationship in central-northern Europe. Beyond these two systems, particularly in emerging democracies, the relationship between journalists and politicians has distinctive features and possibly closer bonds (Hallin and Mancini, 2004, 2012). This comparative study explores the relationship between journalists and political elites in post-communist societies in Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. It investigates how their relationship during the newsgathering process is shaped by professional routines at the individual level and by clientelist ties at the inter-organization level.

The literature suggests that in their relationship with politicians, journalists are semi-independent players in the news agenda-setting game (Bennet and Livingston, 2003). Journalists’ autonomy is determined by (1) the relationship between journalists and political sources at the message production level and (2) the inter-organizational relationship between media and political institutions at the gatekeeping level (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995). While the individual level interactions have been explored extensively (Davis, 2002; Gans, 2003; Lewis et al., 2008; Miller and Dinan, 2007), the impact of the inter-organizational ties at the institutional level is somewhat neglected. This variable is of particular importance in media systems dominated by ‘clientelist’ relationships like the ones in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) (Hallin and Mancini, 2004).

Media systems in CEE have evolved into hybrid systems (Jakubowicz and Sükösd, 2008; Splichal, 2001; Voltmer, 2012). Even though, on paper, media policy envisions a socially responsible press in which journalists play a guardianship role, political elites stick to any elements of the old regime to subordinate the media in a paternalistic system that envisions journalists in a cooperative role (Jakubowicz and Sükösd, 2008). These range from blunt old-school propaganda (Bajomi-Lázár and Horváth, 2013) to political marketing (Bajomi-Lázár, 2013). Indeed, market reforms, privatization, foreign ownership and the emergence of new online platforms have given the media independence in their news output. But, at the same time, elite political ambitions and scarce economic resources have formed new dependencies. This has resulted in a complex relationship between government and the media that is shaped by formal regulations and informal practices (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2008).

As previous scholars have pointed out (Örnebring and Rantanen, 2013), CEE is not a homogeneous region; thus, the degree to which these forces shape each other varies across Eastern Europe (Jakubowicz and Sükösd, 2008). Most recent scholarship explores these differences taking a macro-level approach, which emphasizes the role of political, economic and socio-cultural factors for media freedom (Dobek-Ostrowska and Głowacki, 2008; Downey and Mihelj, 2012; Jakubowicz and Sükösd, 2008), while far too few studies have examined the variations in the power relationship between journalists and politicians at the individual level (Örnebring, 2012; Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012). In particular, the literature does not provide an elaboration on how the structural ties of clientelism affect the interaction between political elites and journalists. Due to its particularistic nature bound by historical experiences and cultural traditions, clientelism is an important determinant of variations that might occur in journalism autonomy across the region.

Political communication cultures beyond Western media systems

The relationship between journalists and their political sources plays out within wider political communication processes, structures and culture (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Pfetsch, 2004). The political communication culture and the structures within which this culture thrives determine the communication between political and media actors during the message production process (Pfetsch, 2004). Therefore, the necessity to understand the journalist–political source interactions within the context against which they play out arises (Esser and Pfetsch, 2004; Hallin and Mancini, 2012).

In the Western context, the journalist–source relationship is characterized as a system of mutually interdependent actors, in which political and media organizations are involved in message production through horizontal interactions with each other, while both aim to set the public agenda for mass audiences (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995). At the same time, it has an antagonistic nature due to the divergent purposes and objectives of the actors involved (Bennet and Livingston, 2003; Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Davis, 2009). From the economic theory perspective (Niven, 2005; Van Aelst et al., 2010), journalists and politicians both possess scarce goods and services that they trade while trying to maximize their rewards. Journalists are in constant need of access to information in an efficient and timely fashion, but the costs involved with this process centre around antagonizing their sources (Niven, 2005).

Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) identify two conditions that determine journalists’ autonomy in setting the news agenda: (1) the relationship between journalists and political sources at the message production level and (2) the inter-organizational relationship between media and political institutions at the gatekeeping level.

The most frequent level of interaction occurs at the lower level of output when journalists and politicians negotiate the news agenda through ritualized interactions in formal and informal contexts (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995). At this level, the analysis of political communication systems in the West emphasizes two arguments that support the political sources’ power over the news-making process. First, journalistic performance has seen a decrease due to the recent shift in the news media industry towards profit pressures and budget reductions (Gandy, 1982; Gans, 2003). Second, the expansion of the public relations (PR) profession during the 20th century and its substantial impact on political communication have increased journalists’ reliance on political sources to the detriment of their power (Davis, 2002; Lewis et al., 2008; Miller and Dinan, 2007). However, in a competitive media environment that emphasizes the infotainment value of news, journalists often focus on political scandals that challenge official control of the news (Sabato et al., 2000) in order to increase profits for news organizations. These circumstances can provide journalists with an upper hand (Lawrence, 2000). Therefore, in their power relationship with politicians, journalists are semi-independent players (Bennet and Livingston, 2003) reflecting potentially extreme variations from independence to dependence. Research suggests that at the level of the news-making process, when journalists and sources come into contact to set the news agenda, political sources might have an upper hand or at least they share power and neither side fully dominates (Gans, 1979; Stromback and Nord, 2006).

The interaction between journalists and politicians in CEE has developed into a hybrid form of political communication (Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012) marked by mutual bonds and two-way interactions (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2008). Having obtained relative autonomy, journalists in some CEE countries engage in investigative journalism with the aim to fulfil their democratic function (Štĕtka and Örnebring, 2013). However, similar to the West, media markets in CEE have undergone a quick spread of commercialization and tabloidization (Gross, 2002; Harro-Loit and Saks, 2006), while the recent economic crisis has had a negative impact on investigative journalism (Štĕtka and Örnebring, 2013). At the same time, old-school governmental propaganda practices have been gradually replaced with new techniques of political marketing (Bajomi-Lázár, 2013: 53). Politicians engage in more covert tools to control the news agenda through controlling access to information, engaging in news ‘spin’, and black PR or paid news (Erjavec and Kovačič, 2010). Even though some journalists engage in ‘pseudo journalism’ which leads to exposure of corruption, this is done selectively under the directive of the media owner’s self-interests (Štĕtka and Örnebring, 2013) and clientelist ties formed at the inter-institutional level.

Therefore, apart from the direct influence of politicians, journalists’ autonomy can also be compromised by more subtle pressures originating from the inter-organizational relationships between media and political institutions (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). As Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) explain, at the inter-organizational level, contacts mainly occur between top leadership representatives of media and political organizations with the aim to regulate their relationship ‘resolving conflicts where they arise and generally defining the boundaries between them and maintaining smooth functioning of the system’ (p. 19). However, this type of pressure has not been explored to the same extent.

The impact of inter-organizational ties is of particular importance in media systems that lack the degree of freedom and independence observed in Western countries. In South-Eastern Europe, these inter-organizational interactions are shaped by clientelistic ties and by the instrumentalization of both public and private media (Coman and Gross, 2012; Örnebring, 2012; Štĕtka, 2012). Government is in control of the public media in most South-Eastern European countries, using them as overt or covert propaganda tools to advance their agenda. Private media, on the other hand, are owned by two types of elites: politicians and business people (Coman and Gross, 2012). In the first group fall politicians who rely on clientelistic linkages to use their media as elite-to-elite and elite-to-masses communication tools (Örnebring, 2012). The second type of owners rely on media instrumentalization by tycoons who use the media to intervene in the world of politics for personal gain (Hrvatin and Petković, 2004; Örnebring, 2012; Štĕtka, 2012). Instead of representing major ideological divisions as reflected in the party system, these media outlets represent the interests of ‘the politician-owner/owner-politician and the struggle for power’ (Coman and Gross, 2012: 469). Therefore, similar to the West, the relationship between journalists and politicians is antagonistic but symbiotic. However, unlike in the West, they exert high levels of ambiguity (Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012) due to ever-changing alliances between the political and economic elites.

Media clientelism as a determinant of the journalist–politician nexus

‘Clientelism’ as a concept has been used both in political science and anthropology to explore the tension between structure and culture that dominated the new political realities of emerging democracies during decolonization and third-wave democratization. In the tradition of political science, clientelism represents an asymmetric social and political system in which access to public resources is controlled by patrons and can be accessed by less powerful clients via exchange of services (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). It is often defined within the context of party-voter linkages as the ‘exchange of the citizen’s vote in return for direct payments or continuing access to employment, goods and services’ (Kitschelt and Wilkinson, 2007: 2). However, borrowing from the anthropologists’ original conceptualization, clientelism has been applied more widely to explain culturally bound systems of societal organization that extend into every aspect of life where informal exchanges of goods and services occur at the interpersonal and inter-institutional level (Eisenstadt and Lemarchand, 1981). As such, clientelism observed in contemporary emerging democracies is ‘a contextually embedded phenomenon that changes with societal characteristics and regime type’ and is characterized by symmetric power relationships in which the client’s power is determined by democratic competition and choice (Hilgers, 2012: 4).

Hallin and Mancini adopt the concept of clientelism to depict the relationship between media and political institutions in Southern Europe and Latin America (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). They conceptualize media institutions as clients in inferior power relationships that are stable, long-term and produce predictable outcomes. However, recent empirical research suggests that clientelist ties between political and media institutions in emerging democracies are volatile and depend on power shifts and economic support (Örnebring, 2012: 506; see also Hrvatin and Petković, 2004; Voltmer and Dobreva, 2009). As Örnebring (2012) demonstrates, ‘Media institutions are often perceived as linked to particular political and/or business interests, which in turn determines how the media are seen as fitting into the overarching clientelistic system’ (p. 504). CEE media systems in particular are based on two types of clientelism, which has led to two power centres: (1) at the institutional level between institution leadership and media owners or media moguls and (2) between politicians and individual managers or popular journalists (Coman and Gross, 2012).

The impact of this structural environment on journalistic autonomy can be twofold. From their client position, media organizations offer their services to their political patrons in order to pursue the commercial purposes of their owners. Political patrons, on the other hand, place a premium on the loyalty of the client, breaking down the autonomy of professional journalists in the process (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002: 189). Specifically in countries with small and underdeveloped markets, like the Balkan states, most of the advertising revenues come from the public sector. Thus, media industries cannot afford to alienate the leadership of the institutions on whose ads they depend for survival. Moreover, most of the media moguls in this region have entered the media markets to protect and advance their other business; thus, they use positive media coverage as leverage for lucrative contracts from the public sector and tax evasion. As Štĕtka (2012) claims, ‘Promoting and protecting political or business allies and, conversely, suppressing opponents or competitors, has been yet another strategy employed by some of the CEE media owners, thereby putting pressure on editorial autonomy’ (p. 448).

Journalists working for these media engage in two different news practices: advertorials – producing promotional and positive media content for partners – and kompromat – producing media content oriented towards smearing and negativity towards political and economic adversaries (Örnebring, 2012: 506; see also Hrvatin and Petković, 2008; Voltmer and Dobreva, 2009). Thus, we can expect that the negotiations that occur at the institutional level between media owners and political actors can dampen journalists’ autonomy to pursue investigative stories, censor stories that touch upon special interests and lead to self-censorship. In such an environment of dependency, some alliances between journalists and politicians can be coercive (Roudakova, 2008), as journalists are asked to produce content in the form of pseudo-investigative journalism that advances the elites’ goals. Indeed, journalists in CEE identify organizational and procedural influences within the media they work for as major obstacles to their autonomy, while direct political influences score much lower (Hanitzsch and Mellado, 2011; Reich and Hanitzsch, 2013).

Yet, media organizations in this clientelist system are opportunist (Roudakova, 2008), shifting their loyalties to different political actors depending on economic support and power shifts (Örnebring, 2012). In such an unstable clientelist environment, the patron–client bond is symmetric, sometimes reversing the power relationship between politicians and media owners. In post-communist societies, news media are used not only to serve their political patrons but also to extract lucrative contracts from institutions sometimes via extortion (Coman, 2010; Gross, 2008). As Hallin and Papathanassopoulos (2002) claim, in a culture dominated by the evasion of the law, ‘governments can exercise pressure by enforcing the law selectively, and news media can do so by threatening selectively to expose wrongdoing’ (p. 187).

In the context of South-Eastern Europe, empirical observations suggest that under the disguise of oppositional media, journalists are often encouraged to pursue investigative stories or disclose information that can be used by media owners as blackmail (Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012; Štĕtka and Örnebring, 2013). These inter-organizational exchanges can create an adversarial relationship between journalists and some politicians, which, rather than being professional in nature, has a personal level (Gross, 2003). Consequently, politicians communicated with journalists according to their classification as ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’ (Kovats and Whiting, 1995; Prevratil, 1995). In such a clientelist environment, ‘information tends to be treated as a privately held resource, to be exchanged only within particularistic relationships’, which privileges the loyal patrons (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002: 188–189). Journalists who are considered to be from the ‘friendly’ camp are expected to have higher access to information and better relationships with the political elites, while journalists from the ‘oppositional media’ can have limited access to information and face a more adversarial approach (Camaj, 2015).

Another power centre in the clientelist relationships that has emerged in the media are individual managers, columnists and ‘star journalists’, who have independent power to negotiate media coverage of politics while ‘cashing in on their gatekeeping and other perceived powers to affect public opinion’ (Coman and Gross, 2012: 470). In this environment, it can be assumed that journalists’ power over political sources during the newsgathering process is dependent on the extent to which decision-makers believe in the power of the individual journalist and the media he or she works for to shape public opinion (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2008).

Method

This study adopted the semi-structural in-depth interview method to survey media professionals in Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. The in-depth interviewing technique is an adequate method to ‘understand themes of the lived everyday world from the subject’s own perspective’ (Kvale, 1996: 27). As Kvale (1996) explains, structured interviews offer thoroughly tested knowledge on the lived experiences of the subjects and their interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena.

A total of 60 journalists from Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro were included in this study.¹ The author interviewed 20 journalists from 13 different media in Albania, 19 journalists from eight different media in Kosovo and 21 journalists from 12 different media organizations in Montenegro (Table 1). Study participants were selected using a combination of purposive and snowballing sampling. First, subjects were selected based on their journalism experience and seniority, thereby including a mix of field reporters and editors from a diverse pool of news media. Their journalism experience ranged from 6 to 33 years, with the majority of them falling between 10 and 15 years of experience. The second criterion of the sample selection was to include journalists from a mix of different media types from the private sector (which tend to be more critical of the government) and public media (which are generally controlled or closer to the government). The majority of the participants work for private media, while one-third of the participants work for public media. Finally, the subjects were selected to maximize variability and diversity in terms of their beat reporting and gender. The initial data in Kosovo were collected through a pilot study in the summer of 2008, with follow-up interviews with half of the original participants in the summer of 2012. Data in Albania and Montenegro were collected between 2012 and 2013.

Table 1.

Demographics of journalists who were interviewed for this study.

	Albania	Kosovo	Montenegro	Total
Total participants	20	19	21	60
Media
Newspapers	11	13	8	32
Television	6	5	5	16
Radio	1		2	3
Online	2		2	4
News agency		1	2	3
New magazines			2	2
Media type
Private media	14	16	15	45
Public media	6	3	6	15
Beat reporting^a
Politics	9	11	16	36
Economy	4	6	6	16
Security/crime	10	5	3	18
Education	5	1	1	7
Health	4	3	2	9
Journalism experience (years)
6–10	7	4	3	14
10–15	10	13	5	28
+15	3	2	13	18
Gender
Male	10	11	13	34
Female	10	8	8	26

Some journalists claimed to work on more than one beat; thus, the numbers do not round up to 100%.

The researcher personally contacted each participant, and at the end of the interview, they were asked to provide three recommendations for further interviews. The author conducted face-to-face interviews in the native language of the subjects. Each subject was asked a very similar set of questions during the interviews, which lasted an average of 50 minutes. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and translated by the author.² The interviews focused on three main themes: (1) participants were asked questions that examined their general views on their personal relationship and the relationship of the media they work for with governmental leadership; (2) participants were asked to assess their independence in the process of news selection; and (3) participants were asked about their specific experience accessing information within governing institutions during newsgathering and story investigation.

Country selection for this study is based on the most similar system design (Przeworski and Teune, 1970), which compares highly similar cases that still have significant differences. The three countries included in this study – Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro – fall into the Mediterranean/Polarized Pluralist Model in Hallin and Mancini’s (2004: 21) typology of media systems. The three selected countries have partly free media systems, with particularly poor political and economic environments (Freedom House, 2016). Some scholars have argued that the Balkan countries represent some of the crudest cases of political instrumentalization of the media, where most political battles occur in and by the media (Coman, 2010; Gross, 2008). Thus, they represent ideal case studies to explore these relationships. Furthermore, all three countries are bound by geographical proximity, a shared communist history, post-communist transitional politics and the joint political context of Europeanization. During most part of the 20th century, Kosovo and Montenegro were both part of Yugoslavia, which, similar to Albania, was part of the communist Eastern bloc. Besides, most citizens in modern Kosovo identify as ethnic Albanians, sharing a common language and culture with the majority population in neighbouring Albania. However, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro are not completely homogeneous, as their paths to statehood and democratic transition differ, leading to crucial variations that can affect culturally bound relationships.

Data analysis

Interactions between journalists and political leadership: Evolving symbiosis

All study participants were asked directly about their relations with the political leadership. In general, the responses emphasized great improvements as compared to the past. Whereas until a decade ago journalists claimed that most communication was mainly from the government representatives to the journalists, this has now become a two-way communication. Most journalists stressed that politicians have learned better than to get involved in open conflicts with journalists. Montenegrin journalists credited these improvements to the exterior pressure from the international community in their country’s bid to join the European Union (EU). In Albania, journalists claimed to have noticed a significant turn for the better in their relationship with governmental leaders particularly since Prime Minister Sail Berisha issued an administrative order forbidding his cabinet members from suing journalists. Of course, this ‘moral initiative’, as many journalists described it, came as an indirect pressure from the international community after recently published reports on assaults on journalists and high-profile court cases.

Conversely, Kosovo journalists stressed a degradation of these relationships during the last years, especially since the current government of Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi took office. Journalists claimed that during previous governing coalitions, access to institutional information was more decentralized. This is summarized best in the following account:

Earlier, PDK (the prime minister’s party) was our ally in the sense that we both were in opposition. Our mission was to control the two-party government so we had excellent relationship and cooperation. However, since this party came in power, this relationship changed completely. They think we continue to be allies, thus we cannot criticize them in the sense that ‘we know each other, so we should not expose each other’s scandals’. They rely on this personal and moral relationship we created before. (KOS_J3/Journalist, daily newspaper)

Journalists claim that non-transparency of the government institutions is one of the major obstructions to their work. In some instances, even access to the simplest information, such as the pay of the country’s president or money spent on politicians’ official travel, presents a challenge for reporters. In some institutions, there still prevails an attitude reminiscent of the old regime as officials do not understand and respect their legal obligations for transparency. During the period in which this research was conducted, the Kosovo government has not had an official spokesperson for more than 7 months since the elected government was consolidated. In Albania, journalists emphasized how the Minister of Interior Affairs had prohibited all the personnel from giving interviews to journalists. In Montenegro, the Chief State Prosecutor, Ranka Carapic, took a very confrontational approach towards journalists, often calling them ignorant, questioning their right to ask her questions and limiting access to only a selected few who would ask ‘the right questions’.

Yet, this kind of antagonistic approach to handling journalists’ requests for information seems to have become an exception, rather than the norm:

If ten years ago governmental officials completely lacked awareness that they need to provide the public with information, now the situation is completely different, it is much improved because they know they need to say something, even if what they say is an incomplete information or they don’t provide the truth, but they know it’s their duty. (MNE_J12/News Editor, private TV)

Negotiating access to information at the journalist–politician level

During the last decade, governing institutions in all three countries have adopted more sophisticated PR strategies in their communication with journalists, the majority of them establishing well-staffed PR offices. Basically all study participants agreed with the statement of one of their colleagues, who claimed, ‘if you need some information, you know the address where to ask for it’ (ALB_J18/Editor, private TV station). However, this strategy also led to the bureaucratization of access to information. Many journalists complained about how they are very often required to submit their requests/questions in written and wait for answers, whereas in the past, they would get most of their information via phone calls with institutional leaders. Interviewed journalists in all three countries emphasized that the institutions had a very centralized system of information access, as very often only the institutional leaders are allowed to speak to the press:

There is a tendency to centralize information and provide only generalized political statements. If you ask specific answers for specific issues like corruption or something similar, you are likely to obtain only some kind of general statement about the problem. The deputy prime-minister … will give you some comments that sound like, ‘We are committed to fighting corruption, we will do everything we can … blah, blah, blah’, but nothing specific. (KOS_J5/News Editor, daily newspaper)

Study participants agreed that their access to governmental information depends mostly on the type of information requested. Generally, leaders are not responsive to journalists’ inquiries about financial issues such as governmental spending, political and administrative appointments, and procedures of policy implementation, where most of the reported corruption affairs have originated in this region. About half of the interviewed journalists claimed that when covering such themes, they have experienced delays in access or overt information denial.

Even though Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro all have in place their Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation, many monitoring reports suggest that it is not implemented adequately due to the negligence of institutions in abiding by the law. More often than not, governmental institutions rely on this law to institutionalize bureaucratic procedures of obtaining information, rather than facilitating access, particularly when dealing with information requests on sensitive issues. As one journalist working for a national private television remarked, ‘If you ask for sensitive information, they point you to the legal way. They throw the FOI law in front of you’ (KOS_J9/Journalist, private TV station). Due to the lack of proper classification of the official documents within governmental institutions in Albania and Kosovo, and conflicts with the legislation on the protection of private data in Montenegro, officials commonly use the FOI law as a tool to deny information (for a full elaboration see Camaj, 2015).

Similar to Reich (2006), this study found that in cases where journalists already have leads on stories, they have a better chance of getting some kind of response from the politicians. A good example is the so-called ‘recording affair’ (Afera Snimak) when the Montenegrin daily Dan published a series of texts based on audio recordings in which leaders of Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the Montenegrin ruling party, discussed the use of state resources and employment as an incentive for votes during parliamentary elections in Montenegro. Journalists covering this story acknowledged that opposition leaders had leaked the information initially. Consequently, it became easier to obtain follow-up reactions from the prime minister Milo Djukanovic’s DPS party on the story, which led to a Parliamentary investigation. However, unlike Reich’s study, participants here claimed that journalists have to rely on their unofficial sources and personal ties to get information not only during the initial phases of news discovery but also during the newsgathering process. Very often, the motives behind information supply by unofficial channels of communication are political rather than professional. Most journalists emphasize that leaks occur mostly in cases where there are political divisions within institutions, and politicians tend to use the media to wage political battles with their opponents.

Similar to Pfetsch and Voltmer’s (2012) findings, journalists’ accounts in this study suggested that their relationship with officials was not very professional as they tend to be very informal and sometimes too cosy. Emphasizing the ‘Balkan mentality’, a great number of study participants claimed that their relationship with the governmental officials operated mostly on a personal level. As one journalist claimed, ‘we get most of our information at the coffee shop’ (MNE_J20/Editor, daily newspaper). Having ‘friends’ within the administration greatly facilitates their daily routine as it opens access within institutions. During the interview, a journalist working for a private television in Montenegro did not hesitate to demonstrate this cosy relationship by sending a casual phone message to the head of communications at the police department, reading ‘What’s up today, dear?’, which was replied with ‘Not much, lovely’ (MNE_J11/Journalist, daily newspaper). However, this study did not find any evidence that this informal relationship led to any personal material gains for individual journalists, even though a couple of journalists mentioned a few cases where they were offered money or where their colleagues have gotten high-profile jobs in governing institutions. But this could be due to the nature of this study, which is limited to the journalists’ perspective.

In fact, several journalists acknowledged that these personal relationships create many problems, which can lead to self-censorship. Thus, a significant number of journalists were careful to emphasize how they personally avoid relationships based on personal ties:

I try to keep a professional approach. I don’t want to get close with anybody. I am not their friend (politicians). For example, Ahmet Shala (Minister of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Kosovo at the time) is my mother’s cousin. But, when I sit down in an interview with him, I tell him ‘mister Shala, from this moment I don’t know you’ … People in Kosovo change their positions or professions, thus I don’t want to form personal ties with anybody, because that may cost my profession later on. (KOS_J9/Journalist, private TV station)

Overall, the accounts emphasized in this study imply a lack of uniform relationship between political elites and journalists. The degree of reciprocity and conflict in politicians’ relationship with journalists depends on the attitudes that individual leaders have regarding the influence that journalists or the media they work in exert over public opinion, the degree to which journalists endanger elites’ interests with their reporting and politicians’ personal ties with media owners/managers.

The inter-organizational relationships and journalist–politician power balance

Even though assaults on journalists who engage in investigative stories that are critical of the regime are sporadically reported in all countries where this study was conducted, they have become less frequent. Interviews in this study reflected recent survey findings with journalists in Kosovo, which suggest that interventions from the government are not the most important constraint as only 14 per cent of journalists mentioned this as an obstacle (Press Council of Kosovo, 2015). In that study, 28 per cent of journalists claimed that the biggest obstacles to their effective professional working are interventions from individual politicians, 17 per cent emphasized interventions from media owners and 14 per cent individual businesses.

The most obvious conflicts occur between representatives of the governing institutions and journalists working for media critical of the government or critical to specific branches of the governing institutions. Such confrontations were more common in Albania and Montenegro, which have very polarized media systems. These conflicts are mainly addressed by relying on communication strategies aimed at controlling the news agenda. First, institutional leadership adheres to selective access to public information to reward amicable media and punish the ones that are conflictual. ‘Institutions create their group of preferred journalists whom they trust and give information to, all institutions do this. This is the atmosphere how things work here’ (ALB_J20/Journalist, national television). Second, they rely on news spin to address potential problems and scandals that arise in the oppositional media. An editor of the Radio Free Europe branch in the region elaborates such occurrences in the following passage:

It all depends on which media you work for. Of course, the government has its own media who don’t publish critical reports about them and only report their activities indiscriminately. These are media close to the regime … so of course they obtain information easier even though they don’t even ask for much information which the government would not want to make public … On the other side, media who are against the regime, I am not sure I can call them independent media but rather anti-government media, come by information very hard. Here comes into play the personality of journalists themselves, thus some journalists from those media who have personal links with certain people within administration get the information. But, there is a high risk that in the meantime the government finds ways to influence even those media in certain direction … you need to take in consideration that the information given is only a spin … there is lots of space for manipulation here. (MNE_J9/News Editor, radio)

Whereas in Montenegro journalists spoke about more subtle tactics in the use of information access to spin stories across the media and discredit media that are critical, in Albania, a considerable number of journalists mentioned how the government often uses the pro-government media to publish information that contradicts published stories critical of the government after a scandal breaks out.

Moreover, study participants mentioned various forms of indirect pressures that generally lead to censure. These are mainly negotiated at the inter-institutional level. ‘There were cases when my stories were blocked … they (officials) never contact me directly because they don’t have confidence in me … they contact my superior and then he tells me’ (ALB_J7/Journalist, national television). In post-war Kosovo, journalists claimed that it was not acceptable to criticize war heroes and Kosovo Liberation Army commandants who had close ties to politics and businesses. But journalists in all three countries spoke mostly about different types of economic pressures on media companies that ultimately affect the work of journalists:

In Montenegro you can engage in investigative journalism and be a free journalist, in fact Montenegro has strong independent media. However, those media are under constant pressure from economic, political and other centers of power. So, it might not be an exaggeration to say they face some kind of repression, or at least serious pressure aimed to discipline independent journalists and independent media. (MNE_J5/News Editor, daily newspaper)

Journalists were wary of the economic hardships the media had to undergo in the overly saturated markets. Uneven government advertising and taxation are used to buy media loyalties, which consequently leads to the ‘death of journalism’, as one interviewee put it. A great number of journalists interviewed for this study, especially those in Albania, were very outspoken about how media owners in their countries were not professionals and used their media companies to advantage their other businesses or attack political and economic enemies.

This often leads to a direct censorship that comes from the editors or the media owners/managers. Data in this study reflect findings in Kosovo that most journalists who cover political and economic topics are under high pressure from the media owners and their editors (Press Council of Kosovo, 2015). Investigative stories get published or not depending on whose interest and profit they endanger. Very often, journalists claimed to have their stories remain unpublished because their bosses (editors or owners) got a phone call from politicians who were not happy with the story. ‘The job of editors is not to filter content for quality … they ensure that content is in line with business or political supporters of the outlet’ (ALB_J10/Journalist, daily newspaper). Many journalists claimed it was impossible to publish stories critical of the government if the media were close to the parties in the governing coalition.

Such conditions have two major consequences for journalists. Often, talented journalists leave the profession or are pushed out and replaced by younger and cheaper labour. The newcomers often lack experience and training and are therefore more susceptible and tolerant of pressures from media managers. ‘It’s hard for poorly paid young journalist to provide quality in-depth reporting’ (KOS_J4/Journalist, daily newspapers). Moreover, a great number of journalists work without contracts that can protect them from such discrimination. Consequently, insecure employment and internal pressure from media managers lead to journalists’ vulnerability and from there to self-censorship:

I am ashamed to say so, but very often I am self-censored because I know very well whom I work for. It is senseless to propose stories that go against the policy of this media, so we are obliged to self-censor … the editorial policy is defined by the owner and the editors and journalists have to follow it unquestionably. (ALB_J7/Journalist, national television)

Moreover, similar to findings reported in Bulgaria (Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012), journalists acknowledged that often news content is delegated by advertisers or politicians who seek positive coverage for themselves or negative coverage for their adversaries.

Conclusion and discussion

This study examines the power relationship between journalists and political elites in post-communist societies of South-Eastern Europe, emphasizing structural contexts in which these interactions take place. Overall, the arguments raised in this study support the emergence of a hybrid system (Jakubowicz and Sükösd, 2008) of political communication culture characterized by the adoption of Western professional communication strategies while retaining past legacies (Bajomi-Lázár, 2013; Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012). Results indeed suggest important improvements in journalists’ relationship with political sources, but they also emphasize tensions that derive from clientelistic relationships between political elites and media owners at the inter-organizational level.

Whereas in the past most communication between the two sides was mainly in the direction from the government to the media, this study suggests that the journalist–politician relationship in the Balkan countries has gradually evolved into a two-way communication marked by cooperation and conflict. Some politicians still cling to the mechanisms of the old regime to obstruct journalists’ autonomy via intimidation and lack of transparency and accountability. However, similar to previous research (Bajomi-Lázár, 2013), this study found that the governing institutions have mostly adopted Western communication strategies to handle media relations. These strategies have led to the bureaucratization of access to information and delays that put journalists in an inferior position of power.

Most importantly, this study emphasizes the impact of the clientelistic ties between media owners and political leadership on journalists’ autonomy to set the news agenda. The clientelist ties have led to the subordination of the journalists to the political elites. Politicians use economic exchanges to negotiate the news agenda with media owners and editors, bypassing individual journalists who report the stories. In such cases, journalists’ censorship comes from their editors and media owners. Journalists are often used as tools to combat political and economic enemies. In such cases, their communication with political elites is based on their classification into ‘friendly’ and ‘hostile’ media (Kovats and Whiting, 1995; Prevratil, 1995). While this can empower journalists on some occasions to pursue investigative stories, it can also put them in a disadvantageous position in their relationship to their political sources as those stories still serve the elites’ agenda. Overall, the accounts emphasized in this study imply a lack of uniform relationship between journalists and political elites in the Western Balkans, caused by their inability ‘to agree on a set of rules and problem-solving mechanisms that would guarantee stable working relations in the daily routines of news production’ (Pfetsch and Voltmer, 2012: 403).

These findings have important theoretical implications for understanding the development of media systems and the democratization processes in South-Eastern Europe.

First, this study demonstrates the grip of clientelism over journalism in the studied region. The relationships between politicians and journalists are particularistic, dependent on personal relationships at the inter-organizational level, rather than universal professional norms like those found in the Western systems. Similar to Örnebring’s (2012) account, this study challenges previous assumptions that media clientelism in Eastern Europe is a stable system that exerts a predictable relationship between the media and political institutions (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Hallin and Papathanassopoulos, 2002). Because of its particularistic nature, ties between political elites, media owners, managers and journalists are unstable and depend on power shifts and access to economic resources. Data reported here suggest that McCargo’s concept of ‘partisan polyvalence’ (McCargo, 2012), which describes media clientelistic relationships in Thailand, can apply beyond Pacific Asia. According to this concept, the clientelistic system in unstable democracies is malleable and opportunistic since it can be dangerous for media organizations to cultivate rigid political alliances in volatile political environments.

This study also emphasizes variations in journalist–politician relationships within and between the countries examined here. Whereas in Albania and Montenegro these relationships have improved over time, in Kosovo, journalists spoke of deterioration in their access to information and autonomy. These data contradict previous assumptions in democratization scholarship (Schneider and Schmitter, 2004) about the linear development of post-communist countries towards greater democracy and more media freedom, simulating Western patterns. Instead, as Voltmer (2013) claims, ‘norms relating to democracy and the media are ambiguous, fluid and contextual’, as they are practised in different ways depending on historical experiences, cultural traditions and the complexities of transition (p. 219).

The limitations of this study revolve around the one-sided account of this power relationship. Further studies should explore how politicians in this region view their relationship with journalists and explore how this power relationship is reflected in the news output. However, this study represents a first step in exploring how the power balance between media and politics plays off in the post-communist societies of the Western Balkans.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Lindita Camaj is Assistant Professor at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston. She received her PhD at the Indiana University, focusing on political and international communication. Her broad research interests include the role of news media in electoral campaigns, agenda-setting theory, Freedom of Information legislation and state–press relationships in Eastern Europe.

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