In Tirana, the Union of Journalists published a report stating that only in the 4 months of this year, judges, politicians and senior officials have opened 13 litigations against journalists with allegations of defamation and image damnification.
On the other hand, the Union says that most journalists work under harsh conditions, with no work contracts and minimum wages, which are often delayed for several months.
The report describes the current press situation, which includes a host of serious problems for the journalist community and Albanian media reality.The union leader, Alexander Çipa, said that "a worrying phenomenon is the unreasonable dismissals of journalists from work in local and national media, as well as the frequent movement of journalists from one media to another, in pursuit of respect for principles and professional dignity."
But the worst phenomenon is, according to him, the 13 judicial processes of politicians against journalists for defamation and image damage only in the last four months.
The report provides a detailed description of the journalists' monthly salaries and even their non-payment for many television productions or prints.
Mr. Çipa said that "this painful phenomenon of default or delay in wages has affected most of the media".
The Albanian media currently have some 6,200 employees, of which only 2,000, or 1/3 of them are full-time journalists in the press office, where only a large part of them have no work contracts or individual nor collective with the owners.
Union leader Alexander Çipa spoke with concern about the ban, censorship and self-censorship that hinder the free report and activity of Albanian journalists.
According to him, journalists are so much under pressure and under censorship that they can not reflect both domestic and international reports on the violation of the freedom of speech, and even they boycott important meetings.