Corruption rife in Romanian journalism

Corruption is one of the Romanian media's chief problems, Cristian Tudor Popescu, editor in chief of the Romanian daily Gandul and president of the Romanian Press Club, points out in an interview with Bucharest correspondent János Irházi: "In the provinces you often have cases where someone pays a visit to an editing department and puts a sum of money on the table in exchange for the publishing of a certain article. Or the other way round. The journalists blackmail an entrepreneur with incriminating material and get paid for not publishing it." Popescu also describes how politicians constantly attack the media, and how President Traian Basescu is trying to discredit the press in a bid to boost his own popularity. "Dan Voiculescu, leader of the Conservative Party (PC) which forms part of the governing coalition, recently described the entire journalistic profession as the new Securitate spies of Romania."

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