Lawyer Arianit Koci has described Kosovo’s decline in the ranking of the annual press freedom index of the organization Reporters Without Borders as part of a special ongoing war against Kosovo’s statehood.
Koci said that no one who knows the reality believes that Kosovo is worse than Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia in terms of press freedom. In a Facebook post, Koci said that the goals of reports that position Kosovo differently from reality are to damage its image.
“According to Reporters Without Borders, Serbia ranks higher than Kosovo in the 2025 press freedom index: Serbia in 96th place, Kosovo in 99th. Lower than Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia. No one who knows the reality believes this. Because in Kosovo, journalists speak freely. The government and the opposition are criticized every day. Protests are not banned. No one is imprisoned for dissenting views. Kosovo is not perfect. There are real challenges. But freedom of speech exists. This report is not just a technical error. It is part of a special ongoing war against Kosovo’s statehood. Soft blows at first glance, but with serious intentions: to damage Kosovo’s image, to relativize the truth, to equate a functioning democracy with an authoritarian regime,” he wrote.
Koci counted the murders of journalists in Serbia to show the state of media freedom there. He said that the media there is under the control of the government and the opposition is treated as an internal enemy.
The lawyer said that Kosovo must defend itself against “distorted rankings.”
“If we don’t defend our truth – others will invent it for us,” he said.
Kosovo’s Drastic Decline in Media Freedom
Kosovo ranks 99th in the world out of 180 countries in the 2025 annual index of freedom…