Phoenix From the Flames

by Richard Lucas

PRISTINA, Kosovo--When U.S. President George Bush made his first visit to Kosovo after the G-8 summit on 24 July, Radio Television Kosovo (RTK) put on a special four-hour live program. Following discussions with the U.S. office in Kosovo, it was agreed that our outside broadcast truck would be allowed into the tightly protected U.S. Army headquarters at Camp Bondsteel. RTK was the only Kosovar TV station to cover the event live. Our feed of the president’s speech to U.S. troops was taken by over thirty international stations via the Eurovision circuits.

We like to cover special events live on RTK. Television is a great medium for the special occasion, and we like to think that the people of Kosovo turn to RTK whenever there’s something important happening. That’s why our main evening news is the most-watched television bulletin in Kosovo.

Over the two years of its life, RTK has worked hard to build up the quality and range of its news and program output. It started as an emergency service in 1999, launched in just three weeks by a small team of highly capable professionals seconded by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) who’d been given the job of managing RTK by the OSCE. The EBU is the world’s largest association of public broadcasters, but this was the first time it had managed a broadcast station directly.
Soon after the station started, the former state radio station--which had been re-opened by the OSCE--was brought under the RTK umbrella, and a year later, the UN handed over its radio station, Radio Blue Sky, to RTK.

Together, the TV and two radio stations make up Kosovo’s public service broadcaster and are still being run by the EBU. But even though it was the international community that created RTK, we operate as editorially independent, autonomous, and self-managed organizations. In a part of Europe where most people’s experience is of state broadcasting, there is still some perplexity at the idea that we are independent. “Yes, but who controls you?” I am often asked. “Presumably the UN tells you what to do.” Well, no, actually.

A new Broadcasting Law has now been passed which gives RTK legal status as Kosovo’s public broadcaster and sets up a non-political Board of Directors who will take over the reins from the EBU, whose mandate expires at the end of the year. And the next stage in completing the foundations of public broadcasting in Kosovo will be a license fee, probably a levy on monthly electricity bills. When that’s in place, it will mean RTK can be less reliant on donor income. We have no UN or government income, and we don’t want to go down that road because of the risk of compromising our editorial independence.

UNDER ONE ROOF

There’s a good buzz at RTK. You can feel it in the corridors. People work hard, but they can sense they’re building something important for a future democratic Kosovo. Experienced staff who worked in the old state broadcaster have adjusted to new technology and new ways of working, and the large number of bright, enthusiastic new recruits feel thoroughly at home in the competitive, pluralistic media environment.
In a society that still hasn’t got over the bitterness of conflict and where ethnic division is still a major problem, it’s good to see all the language news services working together in one newsroom. Most of RTK’s programs are aimed at the 90 percent of the population that is Kosovar Albanian, but RTK television also provides news programming in Serbian, Bosnian, and Turkish, and we will progressively expand our minority language programming. Our commitment to all the communities of Kosovo is one of the central planks of our public service remit.

News and programming are under the control of the Kosovar directors of TV and Radio. Apart from myself, the finance director, and the operations directors of TV and Radio, it’s a locally recruited station. At the end of the year, the international managers will withdraw, a month after Kosovo goes to the polls to elect its own president, prime minister, government, and assembly. Covering the general election in November will be one of the biggest tests of the year for RTK. If last year’s municipal elections are anything to go by, we’ll be under constant pressure from the parties--some of it legitimate, some not. In the volatile political environment of Kosovo, our editors will have to meet the challenge of providing fair and balanced coverage with equitable access for all the parties. If we come through it well, as I’m sure we will, RTK’s reputation will be further enhanced.

During my year as director general, the simple message I’ve drummed in to everyone at RTK is: "It’s all about programs." It doesn’t matter too much whether the politicians and the international community like us. What matters is that the viewing and listening public regard us as honest, accurate, and trustworthy and turn to RTK to be informed and entertained. If the output is good, everything else comes right. Two years on from the launch, I believe we have laid the foundations of a successful public service broadcaster in Kosovo  

Richard Lucas is director general of RTK. He had a 30-year career in BBC television and radio as a journalist, political correspondent, editor, and senior manager, and has spent the last two years in the Balkans, in Kosovo and Montenegro.

source: MHxJU
published by: Roland Brunner rbr@medienhilfe.ch date of release on this site: 24.10.2001

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