Two weeks after winning the locals, PDSR on Tuesday went on to accuse the "media discrimination" against the party, not necessarily from journalists, but from the Power as well. In the party's weekly press conference, vice-president Ioan Mircea Pascu alleged that discrimination is particularly strong from ProTV. What annoyed PDSR leaders most was that the party was not credited for its success in the locals and that, overall, PDSR had enjoyed much less air time than the other parties, which wasn't consistent with the election result.
The Tuesday attack was nothing novel. PDSR often publicly criticised Silviu Brucan's shows, especially in the last two years. In June 1999, unhappy with Brucan's comment of his US visit, Ion Iliescu dispatched a rough-worded letter to ProTV director Adrian SOrbu, demanding that he lays out in public his position on the party. PDSR was also upset because it wasn't allowed to have a representative in the "Prophecies about the past" television show, to counter Silviu Brucan's criticism. "It is abnormal that Mr. Brucan talks about us for half an hour, while we don't have the opportunity to react," PDSR vice-president Adrian Nastase said in a live interview on the ProTV evening news. PDSR forgets that the Sunday show is formatted for one speaker and that a reaction on prime-time evening news secures a much better audience for a political statement than Sunday at noon. The ProTV reports on the "red telephone" and the "French affair" were rated by PDSR as portions of a conspiracy concocted by the Power. ProTV was also served a criminal complaint by PDSR for broadcasting a political analysis show on the first-round election day. The complaint was filed in spite of the fact that ProTV immediately apologised, even on the evening news. Eventually, PDSR withdrew its complaint, at the request of president Iliescu.
More than all these reactions in the near past, PDSR's attitude on Tuesday betrays an image of press and journalists which is as flawed as it is dangerous. PDSR probably imagines that somewhere in concealed laboratories, journalists with editorial prerogatives are trained by the Power, that the news outline is decided there, along with the editorial and analytical content and the format of television shows. Untrue and absurd. Journalists, in their bulk, are responsible people, although young of age - or perhaps exactly because of it. Their work is so complex and fast-paced that centralised control and command has become impossible. Even should someone want it, the press section of the Romanian Communist Party can never be revived. This is the digital age, the age of the Internet.
As to counting the minutes of air time for each party, PDSR should rest assured that no one, at least not in a commercial television company, will waste any time with such useless statistics. Counting air time is valid only during electoral shows, according to legal regulations and CNA norms. Then, responsibility falls on parties and on them alone. Otherwise, the market is free and its reasons are not dictated by electoral scores, but viewership figures.
However curious this may sound to politicians, the press is neither a party honk nor an electoral studio. It is a business where the winner is the one who wins the largest audience, and nothing more. Journalists therefore act on journalistic, not political criteria. Journalists work with news and only occasionally with electoral scores. PDSR comes on air when it makes news and not to get praise. Media coverage is dictated, therefore, by entirely different reasons than the PDSR vice-president Ioan Mircea Pascu imagines.
It's only normal, because it's not political parties who sanction the press, but the public. The public decides what show to watch, what radio to listen to, what newspaper to read. The public keeps a newsroom alive or hurls it into bankruptcy. This is why there are all kinds of press, because people's tastes are different and everyone must find something to their liking. We live in capitalism (at least we like to believe so) which is governed by the law of supply and demand. As simple as that.
It is no real surprise that PDSR's attitude went way beyond journalistic rules. It is the nature of many politicians, whether here or overseas, to teach journalists how to do journalism. Just as, admittedly, it happens the other way around. Nowhere in the world is the press-politics relationship sweet as a honeymoon. And it shouldn't be, either. Once engaged in politics, an individual should expect criticism from the press. As anyone who engages in the press should expect no friendship with politicians. Conflicts existed and will always exist.
But danger comes from elsewhere: the closer it feels to power, the more aggressive PDSR becomes with the journalists who bother it. The tempestuous entry of Alexandru Mironov into a public television studio broadcasting live, after resorting to threats, was the latest example. Journalists are right to wonder whether those threats will ever come true, once the party does come to power.
This threatening attitude is so much more curious while PDSR is struggling desperately to disprove political analysts and journalists who say its return to power would slow down democratic reform and Romania's dash to join Europe and NATO.
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