Just as the Ottoman Empire started to collapse in the nineteenth century, the Balkan wars started up, with everyone wanting a piece of Albania’s territory. Eventually the country was invaded by the Italians under Mussolini, followed by the Germans, followed by the bombing of Tirana by the Allies in World War II. The Albanians, fearing a land grab by the Allies at the end of the war, chose what they hoped were the protecting arms of the Soviet Union.
In 1944, Enver Hoxha became prime minister and quickly moved to redistribute land to needy peasants. During his forty-one-year dictatorship, which ended upon his death in 1985, he moved the country away from the Soviet Union and towards the Chinese, but he soon split with them, too. By the late 1970s, he was claiming that Albania was the only real socialist country in the world. During the Cold War, the fearful nation, under his brutal dictatorship, spent precious resources on up to 700,000 concrete bunkers that still dot the hillsides and coastal areas like giant, gray mushrooms.
Since Hoxha’s death, there have been economic reforms. By 1990, as regimes in Eastern Europe fell, Albanians took to the streets and demanded multi-party democratic elections. In 1992, the Democratic Party of Albania took power, but the leaders became bogged down in old feuds from the Communist regime. Meanwhile, gangs and criminals started taking over, there was widespread looting of military barracks, and the people armed themselves with machine guns, hand grenades, and land mines.
After the collapse of widespread pyramid schemes in 1996, when nearly every family in the country lost money, Albania fell into a state of near-anarchy. Prime Minister Sali Berisha imposed press censorship and the independent newspaper, Koha Jone, was firebombed by government agents for writing about the chaos in the streets.
After Berisha’s party was found to be involved in the illegal trade of weapons, fuel, and drugs, as well as one of the country’s biggest pyramid schemes, Fatos Nano, head of the socialist party, became prime minister of Albania. In spite of his shady reputation, Berisha is still leader of the opposition. The two can be seen on television daily, shouting insults, abuse, and accusations at each other. Their constant fighting fills pages and pages of the country’s four main dailies, constituting what largely passes for political discourse in Albania.
Surrounded by media that are obsessed with the bickering of ageing Communist-era politicians, Troç is an unexpected relief. Early on, it aired a piece on the dormitories in Tirana, where students’ rooms had no glass in the windows, huge cracks in the walls, and serious leaks. After the show aired, the director in charge of the dormitories was fired and the rooms were fixed up. While adults worried about official repercussions, the kids were thrilled that their show had made a difference.
Troç began as an after-school activity for kids, run by unicef. “The idea of Troç is to teach kids to stand up and demand their fair share in the development of the country, to influence where the country goes, and influence spending priorities,” says Catharine Way, the communication officer at unicef in Tirana. “It was to teach them critical-thinking skills, questioning, advocating for their point of view, demanding their rights. It was not meant to be teaching young journalists. But I like the idea that there might be one in each bureau who really has the passion and the talent to go out and influence the next generation of journalists.”
unicef set up a bureau system across the country and provided each with a Sony video camera and microphone. Each bureau is supervised by an adult. The kids volunteer on the show. The yearly budget is roughly $100,000 (U.S.), most of which comes from the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation. But local businesses are now chipping in – last year an insurance company donated $10,000 (U.S.). unicef occasionally invites foreign journalists to teach interviewing techniques and story structure, and pays a stipend to the facilitators and to the producer of the show. The show airs every Saturday evening on the state channel tvsh, and is broadcast across the entire country, reaching 98 percent of Albanian households.
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