The mass media in Romania refers to mass media outlets based in Romania. Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The Constitution of Romania guarantees freedom of speech. As a country in transition, the Romanian media system is under transformation.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Romania 42nd in its Worldwide Press Freedom Index, from 2013. Freedom House ranked it as "partly free" in 2014.

History

Romania's newspaper market thrived after the 1989 revolution, but many newspapers subsequently closed because of rising costs. Most households in Bucharest have cable TV. There are hundreds of cable distributors offering access to Romanian, European and other stations.

According to europaworld.com, in 2004 there were:

  • radio users: 5,369,000
  • television users: 5,822,000
  • telephones (main lines in use): 4,390,800 (2005)
  • mobile cellular phones (subscribers): 22,000,000 (2008)
  • personal computers: 2,450,000
  • internet users: 4,500,000
  • book production (inclusively pamphlets): 13,288,000 titles and 9,288,000 copies
  • daily newspapers: 84
  • other periodicals: 2,036

Legislative framework

The 2003 Constitution of Romania upholds freedom of expression and prohibits censorship. The Constitution states that "Freedom of the press also involves the free setting up of publications," and that "No publication shall be suppressed, establishes free access to information and the autonomy of the public radio and TV.

No specific Press Law is in force in Romania. Civil defamation lawsuits often target journalists.

Status and self-regulation of journalists

Journalists have opposed initiatives for a Law on the Press, fearing that it would impose restrictions rather than granting freedoms. A 2009 study by CIJ, ActiveWatch and IMAS (The Institute for Marketing and Polls) reports that most journalists say that professional norms are not respected, mostly due to political and business pressures.

The Romanian Press Club has an Ethics Code and a Council of Honour to inquire journalists and media outlets found in breach of professional norms – although its decisions have often been criticised as arbitrary. The Convention of Media Organisations (COM) also adopted a deontological code; COM-member organisations have developed self-regulation guidelines for an increased accountability in the Romanian media. A "Unique Code" was issued in October 2009 by COM, MediaSind trade union and the Association of Journalists in Romania, to be adopted for the whole profession.

The quality segment includes title such as Adevărul, Gândul (MediaPro), Evenimentul zilei (Ringier), România liberă (WAZ/Dan Adamescu), Jurnalul Național (Intact). Their circulation numbers remain low in relation to popular tabloids such as Click (Adevarul Holding), that in 2009 distributed 236,000 copies (more than all the quality press combined), Can Can or Libertatea (Ringier). Sport newspapers include Gazeta Sporturilor, owned by Intact, and ProSport, belonging to MediaPro. Business dailies include Ziarul Financiar, published by MediaPro, Business Standard (Realitatea-Catavencu) and Financiarul (Intact).

The public company Radio România manages five national stations: Radio România Actualităţi (news), Radio România Cultural (culture and arts), Radio România Muzical (music), Radio Antena Satelor (farming and rural communities), and Radio 3Net – "Florian Pittiş" (a youth station broadcasting online). It also holds an international station (Radio Romania International) and a regional network of 12 stations (Radio România Regional), including Radio Iași and Radio Cluj. Radio România also includes the news agency Rador, a publishing house, a radio theatre production department, several orchestras and choirs.

Romanian television is dominated by a small number of corporations, owning multiple TV channels as well as radio stations, newspapers and media agencies. Their television business is structured around a flagship channel and a number of smaller specialized, niche channels. The biggest corporations of this kind are:

  • Intact Media Group (with Antena 1 Antena 3 CNN Antena Stars Happy)
  • Central European Media Enterprises (with Pro TV, Acasă, Pro Cinema, Acasa Gold and Pro Arena)
  • Centrul Național Media (with Național TV, National 24 Plus and Favorit TV)

There are many localized or franchised international channels (such as HBO, MTV, Cinemax, AXN, Cartoon Network). Furthermore, there are a few independent and local broadcasters.

The TV public service broadcaster is Televiziunea Română, with five channels (TVR 1, TVR 2, TVR 3 TVR Cultural and TVR Info). TVRi is the international channel. TVR also hosts regional stations based in Timișoara, Cluj, Targu Mures, Craiova and Iasi. TVR usually is slammed for being politicised (its president and board are nominated by the parliamentary majority) and for being based on a hybrid financing system, drawing from the state budget, a special TV tax, and advertising too. Civil society pressures to achieve depoliticisation of TVR have not yet been fruitful The market is extremely dynamic, and dominated by two giant companies – Romanian based RCS&RDS and United States based UPC-Astral. Broadcast television is very limited because of the high penetration of cable. In the early 1990s, only two state owned TV channels were available, one only in about 20% of the country. Private TV channels were slow to appear, because of lack of experience and high start-up costs. In this environment, cable TV companies appeared and thrived, providing 15-20 foreign channels for a very low price. Many small, startup firms gradually grew, and coverage increased (coverage wars were frequent in the early period). However, this period soon ended, with consolidation around 1995–1996 with gentlemen agreements between larger companies over areas of control and pricing, with claims of monopoly abounding. This process of consolidation was completed around 2005–2006, when only two big suppliers of cable remained: UPC-Astral and RDS. Cable TV is now available in most of the country, including most rural areas. Satellite digital TV appeared in 2004.

Cinema

Cinema is one of the least popular forms of entertainment in Romania, and over 100 cinema theatres have closed down since 1989. Romania has the lowest number of cinema goers in Europe. 75 active cinemas were counted in 2008 (down from 155 in 2004), more than half being outdated theatres owned by the public company Romaniafilm. New multiplex cinemas have been opening in shopping malls, including Hollywood Multiplex, Movieplex Cinema, and Cinema City Romania. Over 85% of tickets are for US blockbusters, with only 3.6% in 2008 for domestic Romanian film productions.

Telecommunications

Romania has rapidly improving domestic and international services, especially in wireless telephony.

The domestic network offers good, modern services in urban areas; 98% of telephone network is automatic while 71% is digitized; trunk network is mostly fiber-optic cable and radio relay; about 80% of exchange capacity is digital. Roughly 3,300 villages have outdated or no service.

International service data:

  • satellite country code: 40;
  • satellite earth station: 10 (Intelsat 4);
  • digital, international, direct-dial exchanges operate in Bucharest.

The combined (fixed+mobile) telephone penetration rate is 108.3%.

Land lines

There are 4,106,000 main lines in use (June 2007).

Romtelecom (owned by the Greek company OTE and the Romanian state) is the dominant fixed line provider (around 80% of the market share) and the only POTS provider. Other providers are RCS&RDS and UPC Romania.

Mobile

The penetration rate of mobile telephony exceeded 100 percent in 2007 and reached 126 percent in 2008.

There were 22.600.000 SIM cards active by December 2013. There are three GSM cellular networks (Orange, Vodafone and Cosmote) covering more than 85% of the territory (about 98% of the population), one UMTS only (Digi.Mobil) as well as one CDMA2000 only network (Romtelecom). Five networks, meaning Vodafone, Orange, Digi.Mobil, Cosmote and Zapp also provide UMTS (3G) services. Vodafone, Orange, Digi.Mobil provides voice and data services over their UMTS (3G) networks, as long as Zapp provives only data services Cosmote provides voice and data services via Zapp UMTS network. Mobile telephony had a 108% penetration rate in March 2008.

Internet

In November 2008, the number of registered .ro domains was over 340,000, of which 315,000 were active. This represents an increase of 50% in a single year.

Over 50% of the Romanian population used internet in 2014. Online-only news outlets (such as HotNews.ro, ziare.com, ziare.ro, news.ro, liberalist.ro, corectnews.com, psnews.ro, activenews.ro, stiripesurse.ro) are more and more common, but they usually do not have the resources to produce original and quality journalistic contents.

  • Agerpres is the state news agency (from 1990 to 2010 known as Rompres). It was first founded in 1889 as Agentia Telegrafica a Romaniei, or Agentia Romana, as part of the Foreign Ministry, but discontinued in 1916 and re-established in 1921 as Orient-Radio Agency, later RADOR, turned by the communist regime in Agerpres in 1949. RADOR survives as the brand of the news service of the national public radio. Agerpres produces around 300 news items daily and takes part in the European Alliance of News Agencies.
  • NewsIn is the newest national agency, launched in 2006 by the Realitatea-Catavencu group. It produces around 300 news items daily and focuses on business and technology, targeting companies directly rather than journalism outlets.
  • Smaller agencies include AM Press and Amos News.
  • International agencies with bureaus in Bucarest include Reuters, AP and France Presse, while others such as Bloomberg have permanent correspondents.

Several journalists' associations exist, including The Association of Journalists in Romania, formed by 70 prominent Bucarest-based journalists.

The Romanian Press Club gathers the owners and managers of media outlets, pushing the interests of the media organisations. Local publishers are grouped into the Ownership Association of Local Publishers (APEL).

Television broadcasts and cable television, frequency allocations, content monitoring and license allocation are done by the National Audiovisual Council (Consiliul Național al Audiovizualului, CNA). The CNA is the main regulatory authority for the broadcast media in Romania, being the guardian of public interest. It is tasked with the implementation of the Audiovisual Law and of all by-laws, including the Code of Regulations for the Broadcasting Content, and it issues recommendations and instructions. The CNA is composed of 11 members, appointed for six years: three by each Chamber of Parliament, two by the President of Romania, and three by the government; all have to be confirmed by the Parliament.

Competition Law

The Competition Law (RP 1996, amended in 2001) applies to all economic sectors. Its focuses mainly on preventing market dominance. Concentration is not illegal in itself, but only when it creates or consolidates a dominant position. Still, it is allowed in some cases, such as when it improves efficiency.

In 2015 the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) assessed a medium risk for "Concentration of media ownership" and a high risk for the "Concentration of cross-media ownership".

In 2017, Romanian media watchdog ActiveWatch warned that the private media sector was increasingly influenced by political interests. According to the NGO, "With job-insecurity and low pay commonplace, many Romanian journalists face the stark choice between obeying orders that effectively come from corporate or financial masters, or – if refusing and asking too many questions – being sacked."

Public funds

For many years after the 1990 public funds were granted "in the form of rescheduling and cancelling tax liabilities for several groups of companies" in a way that "created advantages for the existing players in the market and raised obstacles for potential newcomers and for those who did not benefited from masked subsidies". and Pro FM was sold to RCS & RDS.

Intact Group

Intact Group is owned by the family of Dan Voiculescu, former collaborator of Securitate, He is cited as an example of "Berlusconization" in Romania.

Ringier controls 56% of the print market, publishing newspapers like Libertatea and magazines like Capital. From 2003 to 2010 it was also the publisher of Evenimentul Zilei.

Prima Broadcasting Group

Cristian Burci founded Prima TV in 1997. Later he associated himself with international conglomerate SBS Broadcasting Group.

Self-censorship

A 2008 report on "Labor Relations and Media" in South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) member countries noted that while in Romania there were no cases of direct censorship in mass media, there were indeed cases of "indirect censorship" or self-censorship.

Journalists risk their jobs in they do not respect the editorial policy decided by media owner, who might be a businessman protecting its business. Journalists who stay in line are rewarded.

Internet censorship

Law 124/2015, passed on June 12, 2015, held that:

According to the Civil Liberties Union for Europe this amount as establishing internet censorship. The most serious fact are that the decision can be taken by an administrative authority, without court intervention,

Since the restriction is operated by Internet service providers (ISP) through block and redirect to the ONJN website, which is the able to collect data about users who attempted to navigate to an unauthorized gambling website.

  • Investigative journalist Iosif Costinas disappeared on 8 June 2002 and was found dead on 21 March 2003.
  • On 3 December 2003 Ino Ardelean of Evenimentul Zilei was beaten unconscious in Timișoara.
  • On 6 November 2004 journalist Sebastian Oancea of the Ziarul de Vrancea was harassed in Focșani by three different political and official authorities.
  • On 26 January 2005 the chief of the Romanian Intelligence Service Radu Timofte admitted the telephone tapping of two Romanian journalists working for foreign media.
  • In February 2006 Sebastian Oancea of Ziua and Marian Garleanu of România liberă faced charges for possessing and divulging contents of a CD relating to Romanian army action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • On 10 March 2010 Romanian Member of the European Parliament Gigi Becali insulted ZIUA Veche journalist Cornelia Popescu after she asked him about contradictions in his declarations of financial interests.
  • In January 2012 journalists from various media outlets were assaulted while covering the anti-government protests in Bucharest.
  • On 16 May 2012 "Dan Buruca, an investigative reporter at Realitatea TV, was beaten by two individuals in the lobby of his apartment building".
  • On 10 November 2014, Stefan Mako, an investigative journalist of Casa Jurnalistului, was detained by police after filming an arrest.
  • On 1 February 2017 German freelance cameraman Christian Gesellmann was violently arrested by police in Bucharest while covering an anti-government demonstration.

See also

  • Romania
  • Transparency of media ownership in Romania

References

  • BBC NEWS country profile: Romania