Romania’s broadcasting council CNA has warned local media of harsh sanctions in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The council announced in a public meeting on Tuesday that it would withdraw licenses for radio and TV stations if they did not comply with the obligation to verify sources, especially when transmitting sensitive information, such as the war in Ukraine.

The forum invokes the application of Article 95 of the Audiovisual Law, which provides for sanctions that go as far as the withdrawal of the TV license, under certain conditions.

Monica Gubernat , CNA member, told Paginademedia.ro: "We have notified ourselves for all national radio and TV stations and we will give priority to monitoring the broadcast programs. We will also include these priority reports in our meetings. We will impose harsh sanctions if the sources presented to the public are not safe and are not verified by journalists."

The warning comes after news net Antena 3 airing a video from a computer game, presenting it as a video from Ukraine. On Saturday night, Mihai Gâdea presented on Antena 3 a clip from a computer game, ArmA 3, in which a fighter plane was attacked by an anti-aircraft system.

The video, broadcast twice on the station, was also commented from the studio as real.

Three days after the blunder, a reaction from Antena came out. Radu Tudor, also present in the studio at the time, was the first to react. Without apologizing, the journalist said that, under the pressure of events, "errors can occur" and that Antena 3, from 24 hours of live broadcast, day by day, made a mistake "1 minute" long.