The Accuracy, Balance and Verification of News, in Independent Press, During the Electoral Campaign 2009 in Albania

Abstract

The narrative of news should relay in some important elements such as accuracy, the right attribution, equilibration and verification. All of these elements are main components of Ethical Media Code of Albania. This code is at the same time the professional guide of journalists. Hence, the research question of this paper is; does the printed press reflect the electoral campaign based on the responsibilities it has in order to inform the audience? Does the printed press transmit accurate, balanced and verifiable news? Today with the development of technology, the number of people who can release news has increased. Everybody without the urgent need of being journalist has the opportunity to public information that generally is considerate as news. Therefore, such a development as far as having positive influence can have its negative effect. The open internet space for everyone increases the number of events that become news without any verification standard that is required in the Ethical Code. During these circumstances, to analyze the role of professional journalist becomes more important. A professional journalist should always be well informed and aware that his job is totally related with ethical components of writing news such as: verification, accuracy and balance. This paper is based on Ethical Code and on the theory of Social Responsibility of Media. This theory explains that people has the right to do their own choices, therefore media has the obligation to present them all the needed information so they can select what they want and what they need. Thanks to this selection, electorate can make rational choices and become more knowledgeable. These two theories show the proper way the news should be released in the press and should reflect the electoral campaign events. The hypotheses of this study which will be verified after analyze is; the content of news of the independent print media during the coverage of electoral campaign produce and reproduce inaccurate, unbalanced news which are difficult to verify. The methodology used is content analyses, which serves as a proper methodology in social sciences to understand the content of communication.