It’s difficult to talk about yourself, but I’m sharing this story with you, dedicating it to two journalists who lost their lives after battling a serious illness: Erma Zargocan, an economics journalist, and Sonila Mesare, a journalist covering justice issues.
Many people know me by the name Anila Hoxha, but for the sake of facts and truth I want to tell you: my last name is Hoxhaj with a “J” at the end, but the last letter fell here, in 1999, when I was working on the radio. I was a second-year student of language and literature in Tirana and I started the socio-cultural show after a poetry prize for young people. Two of the verses of that poem were:
“Why are you afraid of dogs?”
“A good bark hurts more than a bite.”
As a student who had started school in 1997, I was still living in the dormitory. One morning when I was running for the show, I ran into two police officers in the dormitory corridors. They said that a girl had been found murdered at the entrance to Student City. They were looking for witnesses to identify her. They were making an appeal for who was missing.
The girl was Kozeta Hyseni, a student in the same auditorium as me, from whom ten journalists emerged, but we still continue as journalists: Elia Zotka, Ardi Pana, Leonard Mitro, and Jolldiz Shuaipi.
Kozeta was in her second year of language and literature with us. She was the daughter of prosecutor Luftar Hyseni, who had just started the war against the boat people in Vlora, the city that had become the gateway from where Albania was emptying and Albanians were leaving, risking their lives. After Kozeta’s massacre, we protested, we demanded that the perpetrators be found, who even after 26 years have still not been discovered.
There I saw how with the questions “why was the student out at night” the victim was made to feel guilty. There I saw the bureaucracy. I saw what it means to feel like a stranger in your own country. I saw how a person turns into a statistic, into an unsolved crime. And I was afraid.
This was the moment when I decided to leave the radio, to leave poetry and its intertwining with it, because I needed to start field journalism with the questions WHY, HOW, WHO, WHEN and WHERE, the journalism called BLACK CHRONICLE, otherwise known as current affairs.
I decided to be a journalist, despite the name black chronicle, starting in the printed press at that time, Republika and Dita, to write articles, reports, in-depth writings, events of the day, thus reporting the most painful part. The ugliest, most imperceptible part, that side of the coin that you have no words to explain, going to courtrooms and seeing murderers in front of family members who have killed a member of your family.
And after the difficulties at the crime scene, the crime scene, the characters you must contact after a scandal, an environment of men who find it difficult to accept that a girl’s voice is asking you “WHY DIDN’T YOU DO YOUR HOMEWORK”, comes that next difficult moment. You are in front of the computer and you don’t know how to start a sentence, how to write, because you keep in mind that information is one thing, care not to poison society is another. And it’s another thing to demand accountability. It’s another thing to denounce and stick to the facts. And it’s another thing, despite your conviction, to dial the number and ask for a reaction from the suspect. The truth unites everything.
What you understand at first is something that takes your breath away; sometimes you have to go into different families to console them, you, the journalist of the black chronicle, who sometimes in the newsroom will feel like you’re facing a wall because you didn’t have the heart to ask for a photo of the deceased.
And so, event after event, the journalist gives voice, rings the alarm bells for social phenomena that literature previously treated in ancient tragedies with well-known characters: father and mother, murder, incest, femicide, betrayal, corruption, rebellion, deception, and even Macbethism.
At the same time, in the face of a policy that screamed “catharsis” in my country, after I had met in Rinas repatriated girls who had been tricked into marriage but ended up on the streets of Europe, writing about them was a piece of Albania. They told me about traffickers who did not hope that they would ever be arrested. The south was a piece of Albania because it was cannabis-infested to the point that women, mothers or wives took on the task of planting drugs in the gardens of their homes, believing that this was how they were saving their men. 60 women were declared wanted at that time from the villages of Vlora and Fier, and when time ran out, mother Ferideja, an elderly woman who blamed herself for her son’s drugs, became the question mark that is placed on justice when it pretends to provide justice.
During these years I have seen the most painful part of my country, with tragedies that cannot be described in words. I have met men who have killed women and reported it as suicide, as happened to Fitnete Doc, investigated by me in 2007; women who have killed their husbands in the process of violence and who have asked me for help for their children forgotten by the state, like Aishe Pojana. Leaders of the most dangerous gangs of 1997 who, when they appeared in court, still behaved as if they were strong. But all of them, all of them without exception, even if I had investigated them when they suspected that a right was being violated, they sought out the journalist, even if they had previously declared him an enemy.
Because in my country, you are the enemy, you are asking WHY!
Why? Because you did your duty, you asked a question, you reported, you suspected.
I started my journey in 1999 and today I am 46 years old. I see that many colleagues have left journalism, that journalism is emptying, and that journalists no longer love them. I see a journalism where the highest number of reporters in the field are girls and women, but they are not promoted properly in real media careers. I see that the difficulty of the profession, just like in the early days, is only one side.
Woman or man, to be in journalism, to be a field reporter, you have to be a machine that never shuts down. And this is not about competition, this is not about production, nor about the amount of headlines, it is about an entire system that, if you have a critical mind, you are a problem.
I didn’t expect it to be easy. It hasn’t been and it won’t be.
I am a journalist who was hit with a chair in the courtroom by a woman whose son was sentenced to life in prison and the mere presence of a journalist bothered her, she didn’t want the journalist to exist. The same woman later asked me to confess about the process against her son, WHICH WAS LONGING DOWN. I experienced the online attacks and the next day I reported again, trying to restrain myself and stay in my mission that I love.
I’ve lost people who I told “wait 5 minutes” OR “I’ll call you back,” but then prioritized the news over them, running after it. And only a journalist understands that.
My family is used to me at the table, but I’m not there because I deal with the news. Those who know me know that it’s impossible for me to answer if I’m involved in solving a case.
And today I say: was it worth it that I chose journalism over everything? Should I reinvent myself like this, from someone who read poetry, to a researcher who reads files with inhumane details and then needs time to process how to convey them to the public?
Is it worth worrying when I see a catchy headline that could hurt someone? That could offend? That doesn’t denounce? Is it worth worrying when I read “Journalist Drops Bomb”?
And despite the questions, I still continue, I don’t know how long, but I have decided to stay!!!
I never imagined that I would be trained as a war journalist, like during the war in Afghanistan. And I never would have reported from Ukraine during the war. But journalism is my life’s path. And I am worried that journalists who had also dedicated their lives to it have abandoned this journey; many have fled the country. Others, like Elona Meco, resisted and resisted, and here we are today, again with one less journalist like her.
I’m bringing you other examples to show you that it’s not the danger that kills a journalist; journalists don’t abandon the profession for this reason. But disrespect, violation of dignity, employment contracts, and all of these things together KILL you while leaving you alive.
The first person who was inspired by me as a child to become a journalist was the daughter of a police officer, her name was Evis Nasto. She later left journalism.
The second, the daughter of my neighbors in the apartment where I lived for two decades, is called Klaudia Malaj. She left journalism.
The third one is the daughter of the saleswoman where I buy clothes near the Court of Appeals. She is in her third year of journalism. I no longer pray that she doesn’t give up, but that we leave her a decent media environment.
And for this to be accomplished, those who give this mission must not have the same fate as in the story “The Happy Prince”: “In the city shone a statue. It seemed so happy. Below the people in poverty, disease, corruption and a thousand troubles. But the statue was there and seemed insensitive and with everything in order. However, the statue suffered as it looked at the truth. With the help of a swallow, it plucked out the first ruby eye and sent it to a poor family. It plucked out the other eye and gave it to a minor who had lost the matches she was supposed to sell and was seized by a fever of fear. Problem after problem, it plucked everything from itself, until one day someone looked and saw that there was nothing left. And they burned it.”
Note* Speech given for “Voices in the Media” at the National Experimental Theater, October 29, 2025
Anila Hoxha është gazetare në Shqipëri, me 26 vite përvojë në mbulimin e çështjeve të drejtësisë, korrupsionit dhe krimit të organizuar. E ka nisur karrierën si gazetare në radio dhe me pas në disa gazeta e TV.
Prej vitit 2007 punon në Top Channel, ku është dalluar për raportime të guximshme dhe analiza të thelluara nga terreni. Përveç punës si gazetare, Anila Hoxha është edhe asistente profesore në Fakultetin e Gazetarisë në Universitetin e Tiranës dhe drejtuese e qendrës “FOL”. Gjatë karrierës së saj, ajo ka fituar disa çmime kombëtare dhe ndërkombëtare për profesionalizmin dhe integritetin e saj, duke u bërë një zë i rëndësishëm në mbrojtjen e lirisë së medias. Anila Hoxha mbetet një figurë e respektuar për guximin, përkushtimin dhe ndikimin e saj në gazetarinë shqiptare.
