"Media freedom is essential"/ Balla: Berisha with twice as much television time as Rama

2025-10-29 12:31:00, Politikë CNA

"Media freedom is essential"/ Balla: Berisha with twice as much

The leader of the Socialist parliamentary group, Taulant Balla, was present today at the meeting of the Albania-EU Parliamentary Commission.

In his speech, Balla focused on several issues of importance to the country, such as media freedom and pluralism.

Balla also mentioned the report on the television time that politics takes up, stating that the time of the leader of the Democratic Party is twice as much as the time of the Prime Minister and the leader of the Socialist Party.

"As for a brief assessment of the media issue, yes, undoubtedly media freedom is essential in assessing functional democracies. But I think that what matters in equal competitions, because the media is the interpreter, or let's say an intermediary between the politician and the public, and I saw in the latest report of the Audiovisual Media Authority in Albania a table that is very significant to me and that I wanted to share with colleagues from both the opposition, the Albanian Parliament, but also the European Parliament.

I have here a summary of the television time of the main politicians in Albania on the four national televisions. And I see it as very positive, in terms of media independence, that the politician who has the most television time on the four national televisions is the current leader of the Democratic Party, even more time than the leader of the majority Socialist Party.

And this is something that I think is worth it. Yes, it is worth a lot. And this is on the National Television, the Albanian Radio Television, while on the four main public televisions, the time of the leader of the Democratic Party is twice as much as the time of the Prime Minister and the leader of the Socialist Party.

This is on four television channels, so twice as many Democratic Party leaders as Socialist Party leaders on the four national television channels. This is a good thing.

Ultimately, it is the media themselves that decide who should come out and who should not, and we do not make the editorial line of the media. So in my assessment, what I have said throughout these two days of work is valid: we must all work together in function of all the issues we have discussed.

"There are some cases where the opposition naturally votes against, such as the government budget, the composition of the government, but we also have many other draft laws where we can find common ground, including the issues that were recently mentioned by MEPs," Balla said./CNA