Press Partisanship

Having a clear view of the political partisanship of these newspapers can be revelatory to understand the relationship between press and the political arena. In their article about patterns of press partisanship in the UK 2010 general election, Dominic Wring and David Deacon (2010) analyse how the British media had shifted its support in time, by carefully analysing the various newspapers` editorial endorsements during previous electoral campaigns. Their conclusion according to which in Britain the newspaper industry has been a very important political actor (Wring & Deacon, 2010) could equally be applied to Romania. However, as we shall see below, there is a big difference between the British media partisanship

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and the Romanian one. The Romanian newspaper partisanship is solely dictated by the immediate needs/interests of the media owner. In many cases, the need is to have un-paid taxes written off, as in case of Adrian Sârbu and his Mediafax Group (the owner of Gândul newspaper), or Court cases finished favourably as in case of Dan Adamescu and his Medien Holding Group (the owner of România Liberă newspaper). If the favour is not granted, the support is withdrawn and negative campaigns are started. In such situation is difficult to follow a pattern of partisanship from one electoral year to another.

A taste of how these relationships take place is offered by the famous case of Social Democrat candidate for Presidency, Mircea Geoană. The entire scene takes place in the night of Thursday, 3rd December 2009, during the final TV debate between the two candidates contesting for the highest position in state in a run off scheduled for the following Sunday took place. The Head of State, Traian Băsescu, was competing for a second Constitutional mandate and Mircea Geoană, the leader of the Social Democrat Party, desires to replace him. This story shows how the mutual interest between the media owner and politician goes on quietly behind the scenes and the seriousness of the traded “services”: on one hand media mogul Vântu, considered to be the main culprit in a fraud that left thousands of Romanians without their life savings, is worried about the arrest of Nicolae Popa, the CEO of the investment fund via which he committed the fraud, while the presidential candidate seen as a winner at that time, Mircea Geoană, wants to make sure he has the back up of his media trust during those three days remaining until the elections. During the debate it emerged that the Social Democrat leader had visited the night before the media mogul, Sorin Ovidiu Vântu; his arrival had been recorded by paparazzi.

The debate was mediated by journalist Robert Turcescu:

“Traian Băsescu: Nicolae Popa, the man who looted the National Fund of Investment (FNI) on behalf of Vântu39 _{was arrested yesterday.}

Turcescu intervenes: Please focus!

Traian Băsescu: Is there any connection between Vântu`s invitation to visit him with the arrest of Popa?

Mircea Geoană: This is a huge lie. I do not know who Popa is. Traian Băsescu: Did you visit Vântu last night?

Mircea Geoană: I said I did” (HotNews, 2009).

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This incident gives us a clue not only about how shifty, unsecure and short termed the media`s political support is but as well an indication of the manner in which stories about political corruption get in the press and how objectively they are reported.

3.4.6 Interviews

Jensen stated that the “news depiction of social reality has been decisively shaped by economic, political and organisational forces” (Jensen, 1986: 22). Murdock and Golding (1973: 226) showed that the frameworks “necessarily articulated with the nexus of interests producing them”. In order to understand how the manufacture of the news about high level political corruption takes place in the context of socio-political and cultural dynamics, interviews with political scientists and journalists promoting the idea that the history of the Romanian post-communist press is a faithful mirror of what is happening in the political realm, and secondary document analysis is employed for the second and the third aims.

The interviews are semi-structured to ensure that the main issues are addressed in a purposeful and organised manner but allow the participants the freedom to elaborate (Deacon, Pickering, Golding, & Murdock, 2007). Where it was possible, the interviews were done face to face such as the case of Ion Cristoiu, Mihail Tatulici, Ion Diamandi and Andrei Țăranu. The rest of the interviews were conducted by phone (Petre Mihai Băcanu) or e-mail (Ioana Avădani, Răzvan Savaliuc, Cosmin Păcuraru, Costi Rogozanu, Colin McIntyre and William Horsley).

Significant challenges were encountered when attempting to contact Romanian journalists for interviews. Most of them were very reluctant to speak and the reason becomes apparent in the interviews obtained from the more open journalists. The refusal came mostly from younger generations of journalists, while very experienced ones, such as Mihail Tatulici, Ion Cristoiu and Ion Diamandi were very open to talk about the developments within Romanian media and its connections with the political arena.

Apart from Andrei Țăranu, Ion Diamandi, Colin McIntyre and William Horsley, who are personal connections of the researcher, the rest of the subjects accepted to be interviewed only after I was recommended by very trustworthy sources. The journalists interviewed were informed about the scope of the interviews, the topic of my research and the fact that their interviews might become public. None of them required confidentiality, although this option was given to them. Those who had privacy issues simply refused to give me any interview.

The questionnaire I used was structured in three directions following the main coordinates of critical political economy of media as defined by Murdock and Golding (2005): media

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ownership, media regulations and the relationship with the political arena and the characteristics of the Romanian journalists and his/her work conditions. Relevant information was gathered by using questions regarding behaviours, beliefs, attitudes and attributes. The questionnaire begins with a section dedicated to the evolution of the post-communist Romanian press in order to provide an overview of the main trends the media followed during the quarter of a century after the fall of Communism.