Our Ugly Press

Our Ugly Press

Had the Romanian press not had so many weaknesses, the Executive would have hated it but would have respected it and it would not have made any attempts on its freedoms, as it did by defining it as a "vulnerability" or a potential risk for the state in the National Defense Strategy. President Traian Băsescu exploited its visible fissures and exposed its putrid mold to justify his antidemocratic intentions and to expand the circle of those responsible for our nation's decline. During his many a years of love and war with the "press moguls" he discovered what buttons he had to press to show that the entire system is ill. And this time he didn't even have to look carefully: while the strategic document was being debated and turned every which way, a multimillionaire journalist was being arrested for blackmail and another one guilty of the same sin was giving morals lessons on TV.

During its two decades of free existence, the press has allowed the growth and development of some indecent specimens which now make it vulnerable. They're journalists that have used their editorial positions, power and influence obtained via the newspaper or TV station to develop, in parallel, business ventures or to obtain money and other forms of remuneration via threats, coercion, paid campaigns and others. They were intimate with left-wing and right-wing political regimes. Sorin Roşca Stănescu and Bogdan Chirieac could not have made it to the "big leagues" without the blessings of the politicians they served, whether they were called Traian Băsescu or Adrian Năstase, nor could Melania Mandas Vergu obtain a 4 million Euro contract with the state just like that, nor Dan Diaconescu jump from living in a studio to villas, yachts and personal jets. When "their own" lost the elections or they themselves, for this or that reason, fell out of their graces, they were revealed for whom they really are, and all the negative connotations fell on the entire trade, which supposedly is no better than that of politicians.

The press deserves this unjust generalization (most journalists work an honest days work, for low salaries) because - and this is its greatest weakness - it didn't take proper and definitive pest control measures in time. Of course Sorin Roşca Stănescu and Bogdan Chirieac were excluded from the professional organizations, but they're constant guests of TV stations, as journalists and analysts, which is the same as having their images rehabilitated. When I look at Realitatea TV I don't know who I dislike most: the closed-minded host, Presidential Counselor Iulian Fota, or my former colleagues, true monuments of lack of ethics. Although they seem to have different ideas about everything, if you were to lock the three of them in a room they would get along perfectly.

Indulgence to its own corrupt specimens results, editorially, in tolerance to an accelerated conversion to a tabloid media. Populist campaigns, montages meant to make you cry, conjugal scandals, live fist fights, superficial information, lack of culture, lack of grammar... - you can find all these to be in surplus in the media today. It therefore corresponds to a large thrill-seeking public, too lazy or too much in a hurry to digest reports, investigations, analyses. The quality press that barely survives too has, from time to time, to pay tribute to its filth demanding audience. It's economically vulnerable - who pays money for newspapers today, even if they don't go online to read them for free?! - and the recession aims to kill it completely. It's going through its own moral and financial crisis, the most serious one since 1989, overlapping the general one, which it knows not if it can or will get out of. As opposed to the political world, the press has no capacity to regenerate fast: newspapers die and they die forever. With his thirst for blood, President Băsescu has felt that this is the time to attack, because the press is at its weakest. He could have just waited it out. Because no "press campaign made to order" will compete in effects and ratings with his government's glorious campaigns.

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