Press freedom in Romania is under renewed threat as political parties have been distorting journalism with tens of millions of euros of public money flowing into the media, IPI reports.

Major political parties and Romanian media outlets have in recent years signed significant contracts for political advertising, though transparency mechanisms are lacking. The content paid by parties is not marked as such, meaning the public can not distinguish bought publicity from legitimate journalistic content.

As Romania heads into a super electoral year in 2024 with four elections taking place, the issue of funding to the media – especially by the country’s largest political parties – is back in the spotlight.

“Non-transparent funding of the media by some political parties distorts the public agenda and the tax payers are deceived by non-transparent politically sponsored content that is falsely promoted as journalism”, Romanian press freedom NGO ActiveWatch writes in its recent report.

Cristian Andrei, a Romanian journalist specialized in contracts between press and political parties, told IPI that the mechanism is as follows: if a political party wants for example to promote a policy, they will take out a contract with a decoy agency, which then creates advertising contracts with news outlets. The content produced within the contract is not marked.

The contracts are paid with party subsidies that come from public money. Still, the content of these contracts are kept secret, as well as the media outlets that publish this content.

“Citizens are basically being lied to with their own money, which, we must admit, is quite a feat”, journalist Codruța Simina says in an interview for ActiveWatch.

According to journalists and civil society groups, these often lucrative advertising contracts have led to a drop in critical journalism as media soften or adapt their reporting to favor the party funding them. Romanian think tank Expert Forum states that the contracts reduce the independence of the media.

Romanian independent journalists have described the mechanism as a form of clientelistic bribery between politics and media which encourages self-censorship on certain topics or themes.

While the use of advertising money as a means of soft censorship of the press in Romania is by no means new, the money flowing into media from bigger political parties has surged in recent years, raising heightened concerns about its impact on editorial independence.

“Political parties use public funds to buy the favorability of journalistic media”, says Cristian Andrei in an interview for IPI. “In big contracts of over one million euro annually, news outlets start to either avoid criticism or be less critical. A mechanism of auto-censorship appears. The political party is not demanding this directly, but the outlet changes its attitude as a result of the money it has received.”

Politically paid content in Romanian press was made possible by a legislative change in 2015. Crucially, the contracts between political parties and media outlets are secret in Romania, which makes it hard to prove concerns about press freedom. According to public budgets, in 2022, the government coalition parties PSD and PNL spent altogether over 90 million Romanian lei (18.5 million euro) in contracts with media.

Contracts between political parties and news media have been growing significantly in recent years. According to Romanian news media Libertatea, in the first six months of each year, in 2021 the sum reached 24 million lei (4,8 million euro), in 2022 it was 47 million lei (9,5 million euro), and in 2023 it was 58 million lei (11,7 million euro). This has been happening simultaneously while the subsidies for political parties have been growing.

“In some months the big Romanian political parties have bigger budgets allocated for press than big corporations, such as Coca Cola”, Andrei compares.

The Prime Minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu, has justified the political advertising as allowing for parties to gauge the public reaction for different political initiatives. The advertising revenue has also represented a financial boost to many media outlets struggling in a small market.

“There is no real debate, no pressure on politicians to change the system”, ActiveWatch writes in its report.

However, the threat for democracy is strong especially due to the approaching bumper election year. In 2024, four different elections are due to be held in Romania: local elections, parliamentary elections, presidential elections and European parliament elections. As parties fight for public opinion, the already sizable influx of non-transparent money into the system will only increase, further complicating the ethical dilemmas of the media.

“In the election year 2024, paid information can distort the vote”, ActiveWatch writes.

The millions of euros of politicized content pouring into Romanian media have also become a concern on the European level. In the Media Pluralism Monitor’s report in 2022, Romania was put into the highest risk group with Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovenia.

The Council of Europe and European Commission have both noted in recent reports that Romanian media does not provide enough information about the content paid by political parties and that these contracts have a detrimental effect on press freedom.

The Romanian public lacks trust in the system as well. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has recently reported that only one fifth of the country’s population thinks that the Romanian press is free from political influence. Only one third of the population trusts the news.

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