Besa Luci in conversation with Paul Caruana Galizia and Jeta Xharra. 

In this episode, we talk about threats to journalism and to journalists covering topics that those in power seek to conceal.

In his recently published book, “A Death in Malta,” Paul Caruana Galizia says: “Two worlds, corruption and writing about it, collided.” This statement and the entire book refer to the work of his late mother, Daphne Caruana Galizia, the renowned Maltese journalist who was assassinated by a car bomb in 2017 in Malta. 

Across the globe, many journalists face similar violent collisions of worlds, particularly when challenging or calling out abuses of power. Caruana Galizia’s book highlights how independent journalism is viewed as the problem in many countries rather than the corruption and injustice it exposes. Journalists are often left to fend for themselves with few possibilities for protection. And when they do their job in countries that are seen as rather peripheral to world politics such as Kosovo and Malta, these possibilities become all the more limited. 

Caruana Galizia is joined in this episode by Kosovar journalist Jeta Xharra. They discuss how corrupt political and economic systems, when combined with lax justice systems, create an unsafe environment for journalists; how for women, gender is a crucial marker of professional experience; and share personal stories of their relationship to journalism. 

Paul Caruana Galizia became a journalist after his mother was assassinated. Since then, he has won an Orwell Prize special award, a British Journalism Award and other honors for his reporting. With his brothers, he has received a Magnitsky Human Rights Award and an Anderson-Lucas-Normal Award for campaigning to achieve justice for Daphne.

Jeta Xharra is the Director of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) in Kosovo, as well as a leading anchor and editor of “Life in Kosovo”. She has written for the Economist, Sunday Telegraph and Jane's Intelligence Review. While in the UK, she worked for the Foreign News Planning Desk at the BBC World Service, Institute for War and Peace Reporting and in 2005 she became one of the founders of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. In 2012 the South East Europe Media Organisation, SEEMO, named Jeta Xharra as winner of the 2012 Dr Erhard Busek — SEEMO Award for Better Understanding in South East Europe.

Other Talking Points is produced by Besa Luci and Aulonë Kadriu.

Music and sound mix by PUG musik.

This podcast is part of the Human Rightivism project, which is funded by the Embassy of Sweden in Prishtina, implemented by the Community Development Fund through its Human Rightivism Program. The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Embassy of Sweden in Prishtina.