Journalists Killed, Criminals Promoted

Kosovo’s press wasn’t silenced by dictators, but by journalists-turned-cronies, watchdogs-turned-shields, and RSF’s complicit silence dressed up as advocacy. Truth is dead.

To mark International Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2025, it is not enough to simply observe the global barometer of media independence and recite platitudes about the importance of a free press. In Kosovo, a land carved from war and once filled with the hopeful murmurings of newly-won independence, the very notion of press freedom has been soiled. Behind the curtain of nominal democratic governance, the media landscape remains under siege, not by an overt dictatorship, but by a consortium of warlords-turned-politicians, their criminal surrogates, and a cynical coterie of so-called journalists whose loyalty lies not with truth but with profit and impunity.

Kosovo's media scene did not arrive at this abysmal state overnight. The seeds were sown in the post-war vacuum when former guerrilla leaders assumed the mantle of power, fashioning themselves as statesmen while simultaneously embedding criminal syndicates within every artery of statehood. These men, some later lauded by the West as in…