The Debate Flaka Surroi Didn’t Want You to See
Now, thanks to Nexha Gjema, you can. The recording once censored is finally aired, a victory for accountability and journalistic integrity. What follows is what you were not meant to see.
On a late-summer evening in Prishtina, in September 2024, a television studio gathered three people around a subject that should never be controversial but somehow always is: professional ethics in journalism. The conversation, recorded for “Tabu me Nexhën” on KTV1, was meticulous, unhurried, and crucially public service. It featured the veteran sports journalist Agim Kasapolli; the programme’s thoughtful host, Nexha Gjema; and me. For more than an hour we spoke plainly about what a journalist owes the audience, what a newsroom owes the truth, and what a society owes its own security when information is the first line of defence. It was not incendiary television; it was responsible television. And then it did not air.
Weeks later, as I prepared to report abroad, I was told by KTV leadership that the episode had been halted, on the asserted grounds that I was “known for fake news.” The charge was made without evidence and without recourse. I wrote, repeatedly, asking for substantiation.
“As a media professional,” I explained in my first note on 5 October, “I would be grateful if you could provide evidence supporting this assertion… Understanding the basis of this statement would not only help me but also benefit the public, who rely on media integrity.”
No reply ever came. Nor to my follow-ups on 14 October and 19 December. Silence can be eloquent; it can also be evasive.
What followed was not a private quarrel but a public question. Who decides what the public may see? And on what grounds may a broadcaster erase a rigorous discussion of ethics, especially when the only articulated rationale is an unverified smear? In “Silenced: Journalism Under Fire at KTV” (23 December 2024)2, I wrote that accusing a journalist of fakery “is a professional assassination attempt.” The phrase was not rhetorical flourish. In a small media market where access is gatekept and labels stick, branding a reporter “fake” in lieu of evidence is not just defamatory; it is disciplinary. It signals to others that certain lines of inquiry will be punished and that certain names, and their reporting, are to be quarantined from mainstream view.
By then, the pattern was becoming visible. In February this year, after a public exchange about democracy and media standards, my invitation to an open debate posted under a prominent publisher’s thread was deleted; I was then blocked. “She did not counter it with facts. She did not engage with it as a professional bound by the duty to encourage dialogue,” I wrote in “Flaka Surroi and the Art of Silencing Dissent” (8 February 2025)3. “She simply excised it from existence.”
Petty in execution, yes; but significant in meaning. Deleting polite criticism from a journalist is not moderation, it is message control.
The irony, heavy and obvious, is that the very episode of “Tabu” that was suppressed was devoted to the fragile machinery of editorial independence. Viewers would have heard, in plain Albanian, that ethics is not a foggy abstraction. It is a sequence of practical decisions under pressure. I recalled, for example, an instant from Syria4, minutes after a government airstrike when the instinct to document collided with a mourner’s dignity. “It was a real dilemma whether to transmit the photograph,” I told Nexha. After consultation, we published, because the suffering was not self-inflicted; it was the direct consequence of state violence, and the world needed to see it to grasp the policy stakes. The decision was slow, collective, and accountable. That is the work.
In Kosovo, this work is not theoretical. It intersects with national security, foreign influence, and the task never complete of building a civic culture that resists manipulation. “Professional journalism,” I said on air, “is threatened by corporate interests, political parties, and unqualified actors who have colonised media to advance private agendas.” This is not a fashionable lament; it is an observable structure. A regulatory body that fails to regulate, a proliferation of portals with opaque funding, a profession cheapened by those who want its prestige without its obligations. Kasapolli put it more bluntly: the airwaves are cluttered not with analysis but with noise “clientela,” recycled panels, and a fixation on football at the expense of civic literacy. When everything is commentary, nothing is accountability.
The most uncomfortable part of that conversation and perhaps the reason it frightened those who prefer ethics as slogan rather than standard is that we refused to pretend the Balkans are insulated from the geopolitics of disinformation. We spoke about how Western democracies, confronted with Kremlin propaganda during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, moved swiftly to restrict state media channels designed to destabilise. We asked why Kosovo should be expected to tolerate the domestic proxies of hostile narratives masquerading as independent journalism. We discussed how offshored influence buys local mouths. We suggested remedies: transparent financing, regulatory courage, and a journalism academy that teaches craft before celebrity. It was not radicalism. It was housekeeping.
By February, the debate had grown larger and sharper. In “When the Media Becomes the Messenger of Misinformation: The KOHA Ditore Debacle” (5 February 2025)5, I documented how a leading outlet elevated the social-media posts of Richard Grenell and Donald Trump Jr. to the status of “the international community” a mischaracterisation so brazen that it collapses the distance between error and propaganda. “To label Richard Grenell… and Donald Trump Jr., an unelected businessman with no official government role, as representative of the ‘international community’ is not only factually incorrect but intellectually dishonest,” I wrote. No newsroom serious about its audience would blur a partisan feed with multilateral consensus. Yet the piece ran, and the fiction metastasised.
This was not an isolated lapse. In “Kosovo in Crisis: Is Grenell Engineering Another Political Coup?” (11 February 2025)6, I traced a now-familiar recipe: choreographed alarmism, selective amplification, and a chorus of local actors ready to launder talking points as reportage. The pattern has a documented history, and its objectives are not obscure. To destabilise a reformist government you do not need tanks; you need broadcasters who will mistake pressure for policy and tweets for treaties. The consequences are real: public trust is corroded, institutions appear feeble, and citizens are trained to think of their own sovereignty as provisional.
It is against this background that KTV’s decision to bury an ethics programme sits. The question is not whether one executive misjudged a booking. The question is why a straightforward, gently argued discussion about standards, sources, verification, conflicts of interest, safeguarding was treated as a threat. What is so menacing about telling the public how journalism should be done that it must be withheld from them? Why would a director intervene to prevent viewers from hearing a veteran and a war reporter describe the craft at its most careful? If there were genuine concerns about my record, the appropriate response was elementary: present the evidence, air a right of reply, or host a follow-up debate. None of that happened. Instead, there was an accusation without proof, a refusal to engage, and an episode consigned to a drawer until this month, when it surfaced at last, long after the host had stepped away from the programme altogether.
The chilling part is not the removal itself; it is the rationale it implies. If ethics education is censored, what else is? If the charge of “fake news” can be levelled without a single citation, who else can be excluded? If a programme about professional duty is treated as a political risk, whose interests does that serve? These are not abstract questions. In a small democracy with a young media ecosystem, the line between editorial courage and editorial capture is thin. The audience can tell the difference. They can also tell when power prefers compliant outlets to critical ones.
I have been accused, recently and repeatedly, of being “hard-hitting.” I accept the charge. But hard questions are not a style; they are a responsibility. When a prominent publisher deletes a courteous invitation to debate and blocks the author, the public deserves to know why. When a newspaper conflates partisan messaging with the “international community,” readers deserve an editor’s note, not a shrug. When a broadcaster suppresses a conversation about the very standards that would protect it from manipulation, viewers deserve an explanation. The choice not to provide one is itself an answer.
It is tempting, in moments like this, to lapse into consoling cynicism to say that all media everywhere are compromised and that nothing better can be expected. That is an alibi, not an analysis. In our “Tabu” conversation, we spoke about the first principles: that truth-telling is an act; that balance is more than the arithmetic of “both sides”; that safety of sources, of communities, of the polity must guide judgement without distorting fact. We spoke about the need for an Independent Media Commission that is independent in deed, not merely in name; for funding disclosures that are routine, not resisted; for journalism schools staffed by practitioners; and for editors who know that the hardest part of the job is saying “no” to those who presume they can buy a “yes.”
If that makes some proprietors uncomfortable, good. Journalism is not therapy for the powerful. It is scrutiny, proportion, patience, and when necessary, refusal. “By elevating the voices of politically compromised individuals over the measured analyses of legitimate international institutions,” I wrote in February, “KOHA Ditore has chosen the path of disinformation.” That sentence drew ire. It also drew readers who know that language matters and that the phrase “international community” cannot be outsourced to the most viral feed. Precision is not pedantry; it is a public good.
This leaves us with a plain conclusion about leadership. Those who censor ethics do not intend to lead by it. Those who refuse to substantiate accusations do not intend to be bound by evidence. Those who curate public debate by subtraction do not intend to cultivate critical thinking; they intend to domesticate it. Such people should not run newsrooms. Not because they hold the wrong opinions, but because they hold the wrong idea of the press. They confuse ownership with stewardship, platforms with pulpits, reach with rightness. Their legacy is an audience that is entertained but unarmed; a public square where volume substitutes for verification; a polity less able to hold power to account.
You now have the conversation you were denied. Watch it, and ask yourself what, precisely, justified its suppression. Ask who benefits when a calm discourse on professional standards is recast as a danger. Ask why, when presented with a simple request »“show the evidence”« a media executive chose silence. Ask whether the problem here is a single decision, or a system in which too many gatekeepers would rather manage perception than confront the facts.
The remedy is not dramatic. It is the everyday, unglamorous discipline of journalism done properly: sources checked, money traced, conflicts disclosed, errors corrected, criticism welcomed. That is not the path of least resistance; it is the path of record. It elevates audiences rather than flattering them. It builds immunity to manipulation. It makes it harder though never impossible for mercenary narratives to colonise the news.
If our profession still means what we say it does, then this episode should be instructive rather than merely infuriating. The next time a newsroom faces pressure to bury a programme about ethics, the standard cannot be convenience. It must be courage. And the next time a publisher reaches for the block button instead of the reply, the audience should register the choice for what it is: not firmness, but fear.
You were not meant to see this. See it anyway. Then demand a media worthy of your attention and leaders worthy of leading it.
Tabu me Nexhën YouTube Channel.
Silenced: Journalism Under Fire at KTV
Censorship at KTV reveals the deep cracks in Kosovo’s media landscape, where politics overrides ethics, and truth struggles to find its voice. Stand for accountability. — The GPC Media Watch.
Flaka Surroi and the Art of Silencing Dissent
Flaka Surroi preaches democracy but silences dissent. When media gatekeepers delete criticism instead of debating it, is it journalism, or just another tool of power? — The GPC Media Watch.
A woman, dead baby in hand, grieved over her husband's body after an airstrike Wednesday in Azaz, Syria. Photograph by Vedat Xhymshiti — The New York Times.
When the Media Becomes the Messenger of Misinformation: The KOHA Ditore Debacle
KOHA Ditore's portrayal of Grenell and Trump Jr. as voices of the 'international community' is a blatant distortion, undermining journalistic integrity and factual accuracy. — The GPC Media Watch.
Kosovo in Crisis: Is Grenell Engineering Another Political Coup?
From diplomacy to disinformation, Grenell resurfaces, fuelling chaos in Kosovo’s elections with the same tactics that toppled Kurti’s government in 2020. — The GPC I Unit.