Skip to main content

Follow Up

Yesterday we visited the Tirana International Hotel where the Press were holed up. In one room there were ranks of them sitting at their laptops but few of them appeared to be doing any work. Some were watching the television which was broadcasting most of the visit live, others were watching the other television which was showing a football match. On the balcony the TV people were sitting around in the shade of their umbrellas chatting.

The unremitting lack of activity might explain why news coverage of the President's visit which I've been checking this morning is so relentlessly bad. The same set of quotes from Bush and Berisha - presumably taken from a press handout. The same predictable summaries about Albania - poverty, pro-American, corruption. The same voxpops, for which most of them seem to have found one person to talk to and then gone back to the hotel.

In case you missed the press conference given by Bush and Berisha a full record is available at the White House website. And if anyone comes across any decent reporting worth mentioning before I do let me know.

Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
I was looking for material as well from European sources, but they were really short and I could tell by the tone that they were so jealous!
;)
Why are Europeans so Anti-American? Instead of helping the Us after 9/11 ... They are so wrong!
4:29 pm
Anonymous said…
people were glued to the tvs everywhere
4:30 pm
olli said…
I haven't seen much of the European Press that's not also available in English and I didn't detect much difference in tone from mainstream American press.

After 11 September Europe was supportive of the US - the US turned down offers of assistance in Afghanistan. It was Iraq - and the management of the lead up to Iraq - that did the damage.
5:15 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orthodox Cathedral

These are some pictures of the new Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral under construction in Tirana. The website of the architectural partnership behind the church has images of how it is planned to look when finished.
40 comments
Read more

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more