Some time ago, articles targeting journalist Ola Xama were published in the pages of this newspaper. About three weeks ago, I decided to permanently delete them from the archive.
It is not an act dictated by the gavel of some court on a table. It is a decision that stems exclusively from a deep, inner obligation to what I still believe journalism is.
I’ve been living with it for 30 years. There comes a time when you have to stop if the dust from the road gets in your eyes.
This note is an apology to Ola.
But it cannot be complete without a reflection on the machinery of pollution. That incubus that is ignited to savagely strike at Man, not the Idea, as soon as his argument becomes disturbing. This old strategy is banal and miserable. If you can’t refute the evidence, annihilate the prover.
Dita did this with Ola too.
It doesn’t matter whether the erased writings flowed from our pens or were borrowed from others. The moment a word takes its place in this space, it bears the stamp of our responsibility.
Therefore, through these lines, I want to make a categorical and complete refutation. Every attack launched against her under our logo was a deviation.
Journalists like Ola do not deserve mud, but the respect and gratitude of their colleagues and the public. Respect and gratitude for every journalist who has the courage to delve into the labyrinths of suffocating corruption, which has today brought to its knees a country blessed by God, and mercilessly disfigured by us who inhabit it.
They are a hope in the face of today’s militant journalism that carries a heavy medal of shame on its chest. Instead of growth, it has for years fostered the asphyxiation of citizenship, the exact opposite of the mission.
We have all helped to shape a distorted public, painfully divided in two. Part of it is silent today, numb, because it feels betrayed by us as much as by politics. The rest has transformed into an army of militants, always ready with clay pistols in hand, to lynch anyone who does not fall in line.
There are paid ones among them who pound keyboards from the corners of their offices. But most are good people, who sincerely want this country to move forward. The incessant propaganda, unparalleled in intensity, reminiscent of Orwell’s texts, aided by the journalism I am talking about, has turned many of them into unconscious soldiers of corruption.
They are already accustomed to doing the “anatomy” of the biography of anyone who does not follow the thread of our tragicomic leaders. In a fully deserved boomerang, I am trying this “anatomy” on my own back. They deal with ‘Zeqo’, with ‘Thana’, with ‘Thanas’, they are trying every letter of my name to turn it into ammunition and to dilute what I write, even though it is only about modest opinions.
But they are enough to excite the bloody virtual trenches.
These false trenches are a deep sadness. They keep alive the deadlock behind incompetent and deceitful leaders. Incapable of building a modern state, but masters of keeping the people busy with hatred, so that they don’t see the hand they have put in their pocket.
These pathetic “leaders” feed on the division, on the hatred they produce below, while “above” they share the map of public money.
There is no war “between left and right.” The real war, perhaps still invisible to a part of society, is between the Interest System (which is united) and the Angry Citizen (which is divided).
As for journalism, I don’t know if there’s still a chance to save the dignity of this profession. As if it’s up to it to be or not to be “food” for this swamp that seeks to keep us all in the mud.
Note: This article was published in the newspaper Dita
