Financiarul

The freedom of expression is facing a real peril, in Romania, and the democratic rights gained 20 ago are about to be lost, because of the recklessness of the rulers who fail enacting urgently measures to support the media industry, Romanian Federation of Journalists MediaSind says.

‘A political decision is urgently required to support the freedom of expression and implicitly the democracy,’ MediaSind release reads citing the Federation’s chairman Cristi Godinac as saying during the Union’s National Council.

According to the release, the representatives of the 9.000 members of the Romanian Federation of Journalists MediaSind, including the print media, radio, television and the printing houses, along with the guests on behalf of the International Federation of Journalists, the UGIR 1903 Employers’ Confederation, the Democratic Trade Unions Confederation of Romania, Romedia, the Press Employers’ organizations of Romania, the Romanian Broadcasting Company, the Atlas Federative Union, the National Union of the Romanian Employers, of the professional media associations and the public radio and television (SRR and SRTV), of the Agerpres National News Agency and of several dailies, tackled the critical situation the media industry had been experiencing during the current economic downturn, given that over 2,000 employees were laid off, and the printed press sales were cut by 50 percent, tens of publications ceased, the advertising market were dramatically cut, some publications failed paying the salaries for a couple of months and the public media institutions such as the Romanian Radio Company (SRR), the Romanian Television Company (SRTV) and the National New Agency Agerpres are also at the limit of survival.

The conclusions reached during the debates were that because of the recklessness of the rulers who fail enacting urgently measures to support the media industry, the freedom of expression is really jeopardized and the democratic rights earned 20 years before are on the verge of extinction.
The trade unions leaders also presented the stage of the negotiations between the Anti-crisis Committee for the news media and the governmental officials, and the statistical data saying that among the EU countries, Romania along with Bulgaria and Slovenia, rank last in terms of financial incentives to the media.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) General Secretary Aidan White said that the Federation would fully support MediaSind to resolve the claims by the Romanian journalists, adding that he had already asked the EU Commission to set up an Executive Committee to find solutions for the media’s crisis.