Rankings Don't Always Tell The Whole Story

Michael Hedges May 8, 2019 - Follow on Twitter

The state of news media in any given country is always subject to interpretation, perspective and degree. Annotating the condition of news media is widely reported inside the subject country and internationally. Interest in media freedom has grown exponentially in recent years and viewed along side other measures of national status.

While the Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) World Press Freedom Index is widely considered a valuable yardstick, like the Freedom House Freedom of the Press report, media watchers in specific countries and regions look far more carefully at locally conditions. RSF is explicit that its annual reports reflect only press freedom conditions and not the quality of journalism. With that in mind the RSF Press Freedom Index roughly correlates with Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.

Romania ranked 47th among 180 countries in the RSF 2019 Press Freedom Index, a year on year fall of three spots. Its current ranking is just beneath Chile and just above the United States. Among the newest EU Member States, Romania placed about in the middle; Estonia at 11th and Bulgaria at 111th, behind the Czech Republic and above Poland. The RSF 2019 Press Freedom Index was released in April, just ahead of World Press Freedom Day.

Reviewing the results, Romanian human rights watcher ActiveWatch (May 6) found a discrepancy. "The only explanation for this reasonable position in the global standings is that Romania is not a war zone and that we have no journalists killed because they have done their duty,” said the NGOs FreeEx report. “In our country, honest journalists and the profession as a whole are sabotaged, most of the times, by former journalists who have either officially entered politics or are living out the party allowance.”

ActiveWatch Media Monitoring Agency is a public interest human rights organization. The group has been active in Romania since 1996 and has been associated with RSF since 2004. The annual FreeEx report reviews the status of Romanian media freedom.

Romania has a corruption problem. "2018 was a year in which the criminal records of media owners generally stagnated or developed favourably,” continued the report. “Criminal accusations range from false testimony, influence peddling, money laundering, organised crime group formation, blackmail, bribe giving, to crimes against humanity.”

Then there was the bizarre admission by the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) that it had “infiltrated” certain media outlets when George Maior headed the agency. He is now Romania’s ambassador to the United States. "The same suspicions and accusations of collaborating or belonging to information services lie openly or privately between journalists and media workers,” said the FreeEx report.

Romania will enter an election cycle later this year. The report warns of “systemic propaganda” against “minority or critical voices… permanently demonized by the pro-government media,” which has significantly greater resources and impact than the opposition press.”

More recently, leader of the Social Democrat Party (Partidul Social Democrat - PSD) Liviu Dragnea called for an investigation of G4Media reporter Dan Tapalaga after an article detailing a secret memorandum about the government’s unusual decision to move its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of very few countries to do so. Mr. Dragnea is considered Romania’s most powerful politician.

See also...

• Hot Topics - Media in Romania

• Hot Topics - Press/Media Freedom