November 9, 2012 – Kosovo Law Institute (KLI) reacts to the articles published in the newspaper “Kosova Sot” on November 7, 2012, in the front page and on pages 8 and 9, titled “Hadergjonaj: Allegedly required funds for fictitious employment in the Judiciary” by the authors Etleva Skonja and Gita Lushi, as well as the article of November 8, 2012, published on the front page and on page 5, titled “Judiciary fails in budget management”, an article that does not include the author’s name.
The KLI for five months has developed detailed research and analysis of over 60 different documents and over 30 interviews with all key stakeholders. The research work is summarized in the analyses of 40 pages of “Independence of the Judiciary in Kosovo: Analysis of Institutional and Individual Financial Independence”, published on November 6, 2012 at the roundtable “Financial Independence of Judicial Power”. In this roundtable, the KLI has invited different stakeholders to openly discuss the findings and recommendations of the KLI report. This has been a very useful forum as various stakeholders have praised the serious work that has been done by KLI and have shown interest in taking into account the recommendations of the report and the roundtable.
The roundtable and the analytical report are completely removed from the context in the two articles published by “Kosova Sot”. The articles in their entirety contains slander from the lowest, inaccuracy, omission from the context of the whole event, misinterpretation, bias, qualification, comment, distortion of information, reporting imagination, intentional conspiracy, writing compilation, reader disinformation, and manipulation of the public.
The articles contain extreme inaccuracies, removing entirely from the context the statements of the participants, such as the case of Ms. Safete Hadergjonaj, which in the title and in the text is removed from the context and writes that she “doubts that funds are required for fictitious employment in the Judiciary”, or Mr. Kujtim Kerveshi, who despite the fact that for 10 minutes speech had the same views as those of the KLI, in the articles is completely dealt with opposing views on the KLI.
The articles are so slanderous that they contain sentences of imaginative situations by article writers, presenting to the readers actions and situations that are untenable, completely untrue, but built on the conspiracy theory. The article slanders seriously when he denies that the KLI representatives has asked one of the critical speakers to get out and talk. This fictional reality of the article writer is low defamation, with the aim of denigrating the co-author of the report and the KLI. Further, the article state that the presentation of the report has resulted in a bluff, so it is considered that the KLI has deceived the public for certain purposes, which is a serious slander that tends to manipulate the public opinion and discredit the independence and professional work of KLI. Moreover, by removing out of context, the articles have made adjustments and comments without any argument, as: “have been experienced with concern”, “This reaction, which was not expected by the organizers”, “has put them in trouble”, “and has had a significant impact on the mood of the organizers”, etc.
These settings and comments of the current emotional situation, article writers have neither the call nor the right to do so, especially when reporting from an event. Professional journalism. Unprofessional articles contain elemental inaccuracy, confusing the acronyms by making the KLI, once LKI, and KIL. Panelists and participants cited and discussed in these articles have followed in the KLI the reactions for inference from context and misinterpretation. Attached you have a detailed document with some other violations of the articles.
It is pointless how all the media present at the KLI roundtable have reported in a very correct way, keeping in mind the elements of accuracy and balance of the event, including TV’s, radios, daily newspapers and portals, except for the Newspaper “Kosova Sot”, which saw the event differently with bad intentions against the KLI, distorting truth, misinformed and intentionally manipulating public opinion.
KLI considers that the reason for this behavior of the authors of the newspaper “Kosova Sot” lies in the fact that there are many months that the representatives of KLI do not pronounce for this newspaper. The reason for not making a pronunciation for this newspaper is precisely the distortion of the pronouncements and their inference out of context. Otherwise, KLI in all cases has been accessible to journalists even for those of “Kosova Sot”, until the journalist Etleva Skonja has started to inference the statements of KLI from the context and started to put them in service of various articles on the judiciary, which in the cases when quoted KLI contained incorrect inaccuracies and impermissible settings contrary to the ethics of journalism. Therefore, not wanting to be used and to be in the service of tendentious and unprofessional articles, we decided not to respond to the journalist Etleva Skonja.
As for your information, KLI was established in 2009, and has since turned into one of the key civil society organizations that make their contribution to the rule of law in Kosovo. KLI has built its reputation as an independent and impartial professional organization over the years, paying particular attention to the quality of publications and other activities undertaken by this organization. KLI’s activities have supported various processes in Kosovo’s justice reform and served the prosecution authorities to initiate investigations.
KLI staff, specialized in the field of justice and public policy, among the employees there are professionals in the field of media also specialized in the field of justice, who for their work have been rewarded with journalistic awards, precisely for investigative stories about corrupt activities in Kosovo’s judicial system, being constantly the greatest critics.