Romanian news-media suppressed by ‘hysterical journalism’

Active Watch Organization advocates the idea of investing money in training professional journalists and explains that a more responsible mass-media will bring a higher profit.

According to the report’ s conclusion related to the freedom of the Romanian media in 2010, news-media has borne the consequences of both the financial crisis and the disappearance of its irrelevant content which was demonstrably suppressed by the ‘hysterical and opinion journalism’.

In the last two years, over 6,000 journalists have been fired, over sixty local newspapers have been closed and unlike last year, due to the economic crisis, the number of some important publications has halved.

These are only some of the main consequences revealed after having analyzed the Active Watch report.

The organization draws the attention not only on business owners’ more frequent involvement in the media channels’ editorial politics but also upon the fact that money can buy either journalists’ silence or their partisanship.

After having noticed that mass-media gave in due to so many suppression and censorship techniques, Agency’s spokesmen reminded about the ‘Roşia Montana’ case.

Likewise, in 2010 too, there have come up more cases of journalists who have been injured or offended mainly by politicians, clerks or even policemen.

Video: Media’s freedom in 2010. Source: Active Watch Romania

Translated by: Cristina Anamaria Maricescu

MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University