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The media landscape in Romania

Under communism (1948-1989) the media in Romania was largely considered an instrument of party propaganda. Then with the collapse of the regime new dependencies developed. In the space of only a few months thousands of new titles were founded, and newspapers from all corners of the country had runs of over a million – figures today's editorial departments can only dream of.

Parlament, Bukarest
Foto: chrisaut, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

The freedom of opinion and the press was anchored in the constitution in 1991, and private radio and television were authorised one year later. The initiator of the law was Adrian Sârbu, a politician who rose to become a media mogul in his own right not long afterward. The television station Pro TV which he founded has long been market leader, ahead of the private channel Antena 1 and the public station TVR. Private broadcasters also have the highest audience ratings in the radio sector. Public radio is considered close to the government and multicultural: the country's minorities receive broadcast times on its frequencies.

Political ties are also symptomatic of the written press. The leading five national dailies, which together with the tabloid press are considered to play a key opinion-making role in the country, belong exclusively to wealthy Romanian entrepreneurs, quite a few of whom have held high political offices. Their newspapers are not left-wing, right-wing or liberal along Western lines, but instead align themselves with the current governing coalition to further their own business interests. The participation of Western publishers in the Romanian press market is low compared with other Eastern European countries, and concerns above all the local press and magazine market. Both the Swiss publisher Ringier and the German WAZ Media Group announced in 2010 that they would divest themselves of their holdings in serious national newspapers due to the decline in advertising revenues.

For years economic pressure has been mounting alongside political pressure. Most renowned dailies now have fewer than 60,000 readers and look to the Internet for new markets. Several editorial desks at established newspapers were closed as a result of the economic crisis, and thousands of journalists lost their jobs. They now form part of a new blog community, but online editorial offices are for the most part financed by the traditional newspaper publishers.

This country's media at euro|topics