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bne October 2017 Southeast Europe I 37
including one concerning a €220,000 payment allegedly indirect made to former Prime Minister Victor Ponta. The money was reportedly used to finance a conference attended by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Ghita escaped from police surveillance in Romania under unclear circumstances in December, and was arrested in Serbia in April but released the following month after he paid a €200,000 bail.
He is not allowed to leave Belgrade,
and Romanian prosecutors are seeking his extradition.
Like Voiculescu, Ghita has used the media channels at his command to shape the political landscape in Roma- nia. His Romania TV (RTV) emerged as a separate entity after the breakup of Realitatea TV’s editorial desk in 2011, and has been accused by other media
of breaking audiovisual legislation, manipulation and promoting false infor- mation, and acting as a propaganda tool, especially during electoral campaigns.
The channel openly supported Social Democratic Party (PSD) candidate Ponta, who is close to Ghita, in the
2014 presidential election. Ponta’s first round lead was overturned when a scandal erupted over the lack of polling stations abroad and the authorities’ failure to ensure the right of the dias- pora – which were expected to largely vote for Ponta’s rival Klaus Iohannis – to vote. RTV was accused of trying to mislead the public by broadcasting images of almost empty streets around polling stations in foreign cities, accord- ing to paginademedia.ro.
The TV station has also intensified its attacks on the DNA and Kovesi person- ally in the last year. Soon after Ghita fled to Serbia, RTV broadcast a series of taped statements in which he made serious accusations against Kovesi
and the former deputy head of the Romanian intelligence service Florian Coldea. Their broadcast coincided with an attempt by the PSD-led govern-
ment to water down anti-corruption legislation that would have seriously undermined the work of the DNA. This sparked Romania’s largest protests since
the fall of communism, which were reported in a highly negative light by RTV, which claimed at the time that “the participants, even dogs” were paid to take part.
Yet another of Romania’s most influen- tial media owners, Sarbu, a former TV cameraman, who earned the money to start the now defunct Mediafax Group from selling a tape of the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu, was tried in 2016 on suspicion of tax evasion, instigation to tax evasion, instigation to embezzlement and money laundering.
But while their high-profile owners may be behind bars or out of the country, management and employees tend to continue to adhere to their editorial line, meaning there has been little impact on the media landscape in the country by the changes.
Struggling independents
And while the politically connected media are struggling, so too are those that aim at independence. In 2012,
Digi 24, a new TV station controlled
by Teszari, was launched, with its then editor-in-chief telling paginademedia.ro at the time that it would provide
“clean news”.
“We do not target the audience that news TV channels have now. We target a public who has stopped watching TV, who wants clean news and who wants to make its own comments and judg- ments,” Razvan Mitroi said in 2012, adding that the new TV station planned to be “fair, impartial, not distant, and to provide relevant news”.
However, despite recent reports of a tie- up with Prime TV, there are also reports that Digi 24’s management is consider- ing closing down the station. A number of journalists in the regional news desks have already been told their contracts will not be renewed. Tolo.ro claims the decision to close the TV channel can now only be replaced by one envisaging a massive restructuring.
Despite the financial problems on the media market, a new TV news chan- nel is about to emerge. The National
Audiovisual Council of Romania (CAN) recently issued a licence for a new cable news channel, NVN, to be launched by
a Cluj-based journalist turned politician, according to paginademedia.ro.
“We will follow the Euronews edito-
rial model,” owner Liviu Alexa told the media portal. The new TV channel, which is to have national coverage, is expected to go live on December 1. “We want to make not a clone of Euronews, but a station which will replicate the idea of the European news channel, obviously adapted to local level. We have the power to finance ourselves and we also have a team that will work on this project,” Alexa told CAN.
Alexa’s NCN already operates at local level after his company took over local television station Somes TV a year ago, and he also reportedly owns the ziarde- cluj.ro portal. In the last mayoral elec- tions, Alexa ran in Cluj as the candidate for the new Miscarea Liberala party but lost to former prime minister Emil Boc.
In August, Alexa explained the reasons behind his move to turn the station into a national one. “There is no interest
in Romania in regional news. There have been other projects and they failed,” Alexa said in an interview with paginademedia.ro. “With CNC Cluj we managed in six months to cover 90%
of the costs with clean advertising, without political involvement,” he added.
Aside from ventures like these, the main alternative to the big media holdings are small independent outlets, often funded by NGOs, or journalist run projects like Rise, which has a strong reputation for investigative stories but no mass market readership.
Even though Romania’s economy is growing fast, the media sector remains under pressure and independent outlets most of all. Meanwhile, the return to profitability of some of the bigger
TV channels means that their owners have even less incentive to reform or allow them to stray away from their partisan lines.
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