January 17, 2004

Problems with Press Freedom

fpi_glasses.jpg Romania has some problems with freedom of the press.

You don't have to speak or read Romanian to realize this. I can read only a couple of hundred words of Romanian... but I can look at a newsstand and count how many flattering pictures of Prime Minister Nastase and (especially) President Iliescu I see every day. Iliescu smiling, Iliescu looking thoughtful and wise, Iliescu accepting flowers from little girls: it's clear that these papers think that they need to give the President favorable coverage, and lots of it.

Romanian TV news, same thing. I don't watch it that much, but when I do, Mr. Iliescu is there too, looking good.

And I do read the English language press here; and it's... tame. No investigative journalism that I can see, and a strong tendency to rely heavily on government press releases.

On the other hand, Romania is not a police state, at all. Opposition parties function openly, and their activities do make the news. I see articles that are openly critical of the government. Editorials and letters pages are full of lively commentary and debate. Problems like corruption are universally acknowledged. There are lots of very feisty internet sites. So, glass at least half full, right?

Well... maybe.

At the beginning of December, a journalist named Ivo Ardelean was attacked and beaten in the city of Timisoara, in the west of Romania. Ardelean had written a number of stories critical of local politicians, especially members of the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD). Several of these stories implied or stated that the politicians were involved in illegal trafficking of various kinds. Ardelean's most recent report, published just a week or so before he was attacked, was about a local PSD representative who was also a school director, and who was allegedly forcing pupils to work for him for no pay.

Ardelean was beaten viciously about the head; his jaw was broken and he was left unconscious. His wallet, watch and ring were untouched, so it wasn't a robbery. In fact, it seems as if the attackers were making a point that it wasn't a robbery.

I had an indirect connection with the Ardelean case: one of our local contractors is a native of Timisoara, and he knew Ardelean well -- so well that he took a plane back to be with him and his family.

It turns out that this is far from the first episode of violence against journalists here. There have been a about a dozen of these incidents over the last couple of years, including at least one where the reporter later turned up dead. In almost every case, the journalist had been investigating or writing articles about local politics, and usually ones critical of the PSD.

(In fact, I found out that Ardelean isn't even the most recent case -- another journalist, Csondy Szoltan, was attacked and injured at the end of December.)

However, the Ardelean case has gotten more attention than the others. It even seems to have gotten a bit of international attention. SEEMO, the Southeast European Media Organization, is a Vienna-based media support organization; it has publicly protested the authorities' seeming lack of interest in pursuing these cases. And an international watchdog organization, Reporters without Borders, has written a letter to the Prime Minister.

"The growing number of physical attacks on journalists who investigate corruption within the political class in power, especially in the provinces, is extremely worrying," said the letter, and warned that, if nothing is done, "the enemies of press freedom, who are increasingly concerned to protect their image in the run-up to the 2004 legislative and presidential elections, will think that they can, with impunity, use violence against the journalists they consider troublesome."

The chairman of the organization then gave this interview, which was translated and picked up by Transitions Online. That link is to the Transitions Online website, which moves most of its content to a subscribers-only archive after a week or so; so if you're coming late, here's the money quote:

Q: Doesn’t this picture, with its beaten journalists, place Romania more
in line with countries from the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine and
Belarus?

A: There is this perception that … there are several countries of Central
Europe, such as Poland, Hungary, [the] Czech Republic that have joined,
to put it this way, the camp of democracies and Western Europe, and
another country, Romania, that is still hesitant and is employing methods
that do not meet European standards, and, because of that, it looks more
like Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia rather than Belgium, Spain, and Great
Britain.

WIll this make a difference? On one hand, the present government is quite sensitive to international opinion -- especially now, when the European Union is about to decide whether Romania will be admitted in 2007 or forced to wait. On the other hand, it's also an election year here. That's bad for uppity journalists in a couple of different ways: it makes local politicians even more sensitive, and also makes the government more reluctant to crack down on local politicians (whose help they will need in the general election).

More on this in a bit, I think.

Posted by douglas at January 17, 2004 10:19 PM
Comments

good observations indeed, however, there's 2 more details that I think are relevant to the matter in case: corrupt journalists and blackmail. I would say that there is a chain reaction: the journalists are given money to write favorable articles (or not to write unfavorable) and in case of refusal they're either blackmailed or eliminated from the system (threaten, fired, beaten, etc)

"Romania is not a police state" - IMO it is a network of 10-20.000 individuals from the first two - three tiers whose personal interests are above the common one. As such they support each other and it is very difficult to break it apart - perhaps the uninominal vote would help this process.

And on a final tone, it is interesting to note that the major restructuring decisions were made at the insistence of international boards of IMF, WB, etc, and they are less of a result of a coherent long term strategy.

my 2 cents.

Posted by: dragos at January 18, 2004 01:18 PM

Corrupt journalists and blackmail...

I don't have an opinion on this (yet), as it's not my field and I don't know much about it. That may change, of course.

[Romania] is a network of 10-20.000 individuals from the first two - three tiers whose personal interests are above the common one.

I think there's some truth to this, though I might raise those numbers.

Romania is not a fully functional democracy yet, no. But it's come a very long way, and (since 1989) mostly peacefully. I think further improvement is still possible. Call me an optimist.


the major restructuring decisions were made at the insistence of international boards of IMF, WB, etc, and they are less of a result of a coherent long term strategy.

Basically true, but then that's true everywhere. Almost all the transition governments have needed outside help to move the privatization/restructuring process along. (The two interesting exceptions are Hungary and Russia, for very different reasons -- Hungary because they rejected outside advice and did it their own way, Russia because Yeltsin just handed state assets off to the oligarchs.)

The lack of a coherent long term strategy... well, no Romanian government ever developed one, and it's not the job of the World Bank to do that.

Privatization has had problems here -- it still does -- but, well, that's probably a topic for another post. Or several of them.


Doug M.

Posted by: Douglas at January 19, 2004 10:09 PM