AMP: Romanian authorities promoted damaging initiative for the press in 2010

A report regarding press liberty in Romania in 2010 was launched on Monday, in a conference, by Romanian Press Monitoring Agency (AMP), according to Mediafax.

The report regarding Romanian press liberty in 2010 underlined that, last year, Romanian authorities and politicians promoted legislative initiative that had a negative impact on press liberty.

According to the report, the media market was strongly affected by crisis and by the disappearance of the relevant and verifiable content, that got suffocated by “histerical” and opinion journalism.

The report also showed, in 2010, the number of copies printed halved compared to the year before.

Also, in the last 2 years, in Romania there were fired around  6,000 media employees (journalists and technical staff), over 60 local newspapers were closed and many national newspapers ceased existence and, along with them, their online archives – that were stocked with important journalistic materials, gathered along many years.

Another thing signaled by the report were the managerial and shareholders changes in media institutions.

2010 was a year of political and economical pressures on media institutions, with businessmen buying mass-media to gain political influence. The scandals involving media owners showed that they were controlling editorial politic and changed it according to their economical, political and juridical interests.

The entire report is available, in Romanian, here.

ActiveWatch – Agenţia de Monitorizare a Presei is publishing annual report on press liberty in Romania.