Report: “The state of Romanian media in the 2024 super-electoral year”

We started this analysis with a fundamental question: How prepared is the Romanian media to fulfill its public mandate in one of the most important years for our democracy? Too little or not at all, say the people we talked to. The fatigue in the newsrooms; the lack of financial resources independent of political or economic constraints; the blocking of public interest information; the takeover of the mainstream media by political or commercial actors; the dependency on social media networks; the changes in how we consume information; the harassment, litigations, and the public contempt towards journalists – all of these paint a bleak picture of the state of the Romanian media.  

In 2023, political parties spent €24.5 million (from the public subsidy to parliamentary parties) on press and propaganda, double the budget spent in 2021 on the same line. Where did this money go? We don’t know exactly, because the parties refuse to make this expenditure public. The little information that does reach us comes from the investigations of a few journalists, and it paints a bleak picture. Millions of euros enter the media non-transparently for editorial content, i.e. news, interviews, and talk shows, which is not marked as advertising. Profoundly unethical, the practice is quietly accepted by the media institutions that receive these funds.

Beyond the toxicity of this phenomenon for the public, who are lied to daily – on their money – the effects are damaging for the entire media industry. The beneficiary media institutions are artificially supported by public money to mislead their audiences, and they compete unfairly with those media organizations that do not accept this type of contract. Moreover, the whole democratic process suffers, because people come to believe that the whole media is bought by politicians, except for one or two alternative media organizations, which have a greater level of trust. And this is essentially the great evil. The press is no longer perceived as the “fourth estate”, but merely as a tool of the political class. Politicians are guilty of this hijacking of the way we inform ourselves, but the press is also to blame, having completely capitulated to those rich public budgets. 

The public space abounds in press releases and Facebook statements delivered as news, and the vacuum of trust is filled by social media networks and those who communicate effectively there. Without strong journalism, in 2024 the information space will be dominated by junk, noise, and information delivered by politicians that cannot be easily verified or put into context by those who will be asked to vote. Emotions, fears, disempowerment, and lack of real information will be the deciding factors in the voting booth.

The alternative press, as fragmented and vulnerable as it is, is doing its job, documenting important stories. However, these newsrooms are too few to counterbalance the propaganda and the non-combat of the mainstream press.

In almost all the interviews we conducted, fatigue, burnout, and sadness were evident. But we never saw signs of giving up. Despite the systemic fatigue, the lack of resources, and the feeling that maybe this time the small stump most likely is not going to overturn the big cart, the journalists we spoke to believe in the idea that 2024 is too important for them to stop right now.

There are still many good journalists in Romania, who do their job with respect for the people they inform and with a passion for journalism. They are harder to see, yes, mostly because the bad is always more visible than the good. And better organized. But by paying for content, by reacting when journalists are attacked and harassed, by sanctioning politicians who use the press as a tool for manipulation, we can ensure that there will continue to be islands of journalistic survival from which, hopefully, a media industry can then develop that operates with the mission (and arsenal) of the fourth estate in a democracy.