Brief Chronicle of the daily Albanian newspaper "Kosova Sot"
The publisher "Interpress R. Company" had planned since February 1998,
to appear with an independent informative newspaper in Albanian language
and this was envisaged after many difficulties that were present at that
time and are ongoing even now in Kosova. After many errangements, the
publisher and its editing council decided that on September 11, 1998
appear with the first number of this newspaper.
Moreover, it happened. Difficulties were of all kinds concerning first
of its entire young staff with little experience and then the technical
equipment and other problems.
In its first days, the newspaper "Kosova Sot" was welcomed from its
Albanian readers in Kosova and abroad but also from international
opinion because "Kosova Sot" with one page in English language managed
to represent itself with its most important articles in its pages.
>From a newspaper with a humble number of copies at the start, after
couple of months it was printed and sold in more than 35.000 copies and
so it had become Albanian daily newspaper with the greatest number of
sold copies in Kosova.
Resoluteness and firmness of mind of the publisher and its editing
council was and remains inflexible; to inform correctly, objectively and
impartially but, always telling the truth. This resoluteness had helped
our newspaper's editing to come out from its unacquaintedness in the
beginning. The fact that made the newspaper more readable was that our
teams broke through since the first days into the fighting areas in
Kosova and so we become a kind of prolocutor for those people living and
experiencing the terrors of war.
Until now, we have followed our impartial editing policy and we had
reactions from neither side.
In one word, we had a professional resoluteness to be a medium
newspaper, and so it seemed that we have been a great obstacle for the
authorities in Belgrade whom hardly waited to restrict our newspaper
from being published any further. Judicial organs have proved in written
that they had pressed charges according to their laws for "spreading
national and religious hatred" notwithstanding the fact that this cannot
be proved by any of our published articles. They had presented their
remarks for the New Year's calendar, where KLA photographs dominate for
which we weren't neither among the first nor among the last who
published a calendar of such kind.
Charges that Local Public Prosecutor House in Prishtina have pressed
with the order given from the Information Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar
Vucic, wont make us step down from our firmness of mind, professional
resoluteness and our national awareness, in order to continue our
itinerary we started before in order to provide information on time and
impartially, but of course being unimpeded to continue with our
work.
Staff of the Editing of the Daily Independent Informative Newspaper
"Kosova Sot"
