On ethics in the media and solidarity with colleagues from the show Piranhas

2025-06-07 15:18:00, Opinione Ola Xama

12 years ago, one of the events that took center stage in the international media for weeks was a video showing British Prime Minister David Cameron forgetting his 8-year-old daughter in a pub.

All media outlets, including public broadcaster BBC News, reported it as news, following all media standards. The video covered the girl's distinctive images, showed the incident and the route it took, and included experts who provided statistics on how common these cases were among parents . The Cameron couple were eventually contacted and said "we were relieved to find her and that this could happen to anyone".

In parallel, a very big debate was put up for discussion: Can an 8-year-old child be put at the center of reports for 1 month just because her father is the prime minister? Why weren't thousands of children who have had the same thing happen to them subject to similar reports? Why should the psychological trauma of a minor be risked and the privacy of how a family spends its afternoon be violated?
These questions were overshadowed by other questions: Is it of interest to the public that the prime minister forgets his child in the pub? Are we dealing with an irresponsible prime minister in government, when he is such in family life?
This event reminded me of what has been happening in recent hours with the investigation broadcast by the Piranjat show. The commanding mayor of Tirana, her husband and child, use 3 vehicles and 3 drivers paid with public money for personal needs. Faced with this fact, instead of apologizing or giving a human explanation about the family circumstances that forced her to commit this abuse, Ms. Ristani starts insulting the journalist!
No change in the level of arrogance with her predecessor, no responsibility - on the contrary, she makes statements that incite hate speech against journalists and their mission. Even after the broadcast of the show there was no reflection, but a threat of criminal investigations for having been persecuted and the child's private life violated.

If Mrs. Ristani was concerned about the child, she would not use that language in front of the cameras because she would first miseducate her child. If she were truly concerned about him, she would not teach him how state funds are stolen and abused when he is a minor.
But the topic here is not the morality that she is trying to communicate to us, nor the morality that we as a mother should do, even when she is the mayor. The main point here is that with public funds her child is accompanied to school, her husband to work and she herself to the gym . So the logic of this family is that the child does not have to have his privacy violated because his mother has a public position, but he can benefit from the benefits of power and be forgiven any abuse because he is a minor!
As far as I saw, the Piranhas had implemented every ethical standard. Every word in the text was substantiated with images and documents, both parties, Mrs. Ristani and her husband, were questioned, and images showing the child being accompanied were avoided. Personally, if I were in Mrs. Ristani's place in the statement, I would encourage these journalistic standards.

The point is that officials here do not want journalism to have standards, because when there are no standards, the government controls it better . In the 50s in England, Prime Minister Clement Attlee's staff told it as an anecdote when asked what his greatest fear was, "The morning newspapers - they said." So this is the difference between a free and a controlled media: when the media is free it overthrows the government, and when it is controlled it holds it. Anyone who steps out of line is attacked in every way, sometimes directly by the government and sometimes using the journalists themselves.