Striking for media values
By Patti McCracken Posted Apr 1 2005
Angela Arama, Natalia Chiosse
Four hundred employees protested a new government-enforced hiring process, based on political, not professional, criteria.
The former Soviet republic of Moldova, now a small independent country tucked between Ukraine and Romania and wedged between the east and the west, has the only freely elected communist government in the world. Ever since the party was voted into power in 2000, press freedoms have diminished.
Last summer, Moldova’s state television and radio broadcaster, Teleradio, fired everyone on staff because a law stipulated that such an action was necessary to truly become a public broadcaster. Angry and frustrated by the lack of transparency and the methods of conducting the test, about 400 journalists at Teleradio went on strike.
“The law provided only that the employees be rehired if they passed a test, but it didn’t establish any criteria in order to be able to determine who is professional and who is not,” says Olivia Pirtac, a lawyer specializing in media issues at the Independent Journalism Center in Chisinau.
According to Corina Fusu, a former Teleradio journalist and one of the leaders of the strike, the tests were subjective, depending on the employee. Custodians were asked what they would do if they walked into a room and found a picture of Lenin on the floor. Drivers were asked arbitrary history questions, such as what year Napoleon was born. Fusu, the host of a popular political show, says she came under fire for giving air time to opposition leaders.
“For my test, they examined my film[s],” Fusu says. “They looked at how many seconds each party was on air and asked why more time was not given to [Moldovan President] Voronin.”
“The reporters were not consulted about their views on how the transformation would take place,” says Federica Prina, European Program Officer at Article 19, a London-based media watchdog. “A lot of them felt very marginalized.”
When the strikes first started, the journalists staged a sit-in protest at the Teleradio newsrooms but were ousted when authorities claimed there was a bomb in the building.
Undeterred, the journalists moved their protest to the state radio building and then to the central park in Chisinau, where the number of supporters grew into the thousands.
The strike continued to gain momentum, and many reporters went on a hunger strike for about a month. With permits in hand, strikers set up tents in front of the state radio building to continue their vigil.
Although the reporters staged the protest within a legal framework, friction with police and other authorities continued. One evening violence erupted when attackers raided the protest site, dislodging tents and attempting to remove the strikers. There were reports of beatings, including at least one of a broken leg. Fusu and others are suspicious about the raiders and say they operated with the skill and knowledge of policemen. They find it odd that television cameras were immediately at the site to record the rampage.
Teleradio’s report of the event portrayed the journalists as the aggressors, not the other way around. Teleradio representatives refused to be interviewed for this story.
This was not the first strike for Moldovan Teleradio reporters. Two years ago, about 400 journalists protested increasing censorship of their material. That strike also garnered significant public support and was bolstered by Western nations and the Council of Europe, which put heated pressure on the communist government to privatize Teleradio.
As a result, referendums were passed that would eventually lead to the transformation of the state-run media outlet.
The original referendum drafted by a local broadcast union, APEL, was dismissed by politicians, and parliament ended up passing its own version of the law.
Under APEL’s draft, endorsed and approved by the Council of Europe, the transfer from a state-run medium to a public broadcast outlet would be overseen by a consortium which included communist and opposition parties, Teleradio staff and various other non-governmental organizations.
But this was a sticking point for the ruling party, which demanded that such a committee be comprised solely of the president and parliament representatives. This version of the law was passed after some controversy. The journalism community guardedly supported the new law because it had more positive qualities than negative ones. The end result would, after all, be a public broadcast company.
Under much pressure from the West but lacking the political will to privatize, the communist authorities used the referendums to increase control of the media by using the rehiring process to handpick management and journalists ahead of the 2005 elections, held for March 6.
The Communist Party’s grip on the Moldovan press was getting tighter overall as the election neared. Two months ago, it created a coalition with six other pro-government publications and ordered all state institutions to finance individual subscriptions for all of the employees. According to the online magazine Moldova Azi, each institution had a “ten-day period to comply and report back to their superiors.”
Media NGOs, such as the Independent Journalism Center and the broadcasters union APEL, have been on the forefront of change, including lobbying successfully for the decriminalization of the penal code that eliminates prison terms for libel and slander.
IJC Director Angela Sirbu has written, however, that reporters are still subjected to “hefty financial penalties … for writing or broadcasting anything that insults a person’s honor or dignity.”
Media monitoring provided by the IJC shows that since Teleradio became a public company last summer, its bias has actually increased by allowing more air time for President Voronin and less for opposition parties.
“We can’t really describe Teleradio as a public organization, despite the [so-called] changes, it has a lot of bias,” says Article 19’s Federica Prina. “It definitely favors the establishment. It does not serve the needs of the public but the needs of the authorities.”
Moldova is not the only post-Soviet country where the press feels pressure from the government. Although the countries of Eastern Europe have evolved in different manners, all suffer in varying degrees from government oppression; all are learning alone to define the role the press will have and to differentiate between independence and opposition when it comes to reporting and interpreting the news.
For instance, the Russian media are still heavily influenced by President Putin. Russia’s major media conglomerate is operated by Gazprom, a mega-gas company that dominates the post-Soviet scene far beyond Russia’s borders.
The Kremlin has come under fire from regional and international journalism communities for controlling the free flow of information during national crises, such as the Kursk submarine disaster, the siege of the Moscow Theater and the horror at Beslan grammar school. The Kremlin has also been criticized lately for generally cracking down on the media’s quest for information.
In Belarus, authorities have openly forced some international media NGOs to pack up and leave. Censorship is the prevailing complaint among journalists and ranges from direct censorship by authorities (including threats), to mincing of words and the ever-present self-censorship, which is evident throughout much of Eastern Europe.
Until a few months ago, Ukrainian media were famous only for the tragic fate of freelance reporter Georgiy Gongadze, who was allegedly murdered by government authorities in September 2000 while reporting on corruption at the highest levels (See IPI Global Journalist Third Quarter 2004). Gongadze became the poster child for oppressed media throughout Europe. Now Ukraine is famous for a peaceful transition of power, largely thanks to reporters for the state media who refused to broadcast the propaganda and misinformation of the ruling party.
Post-Soviet countries of Eastern Europe have a short history of independence, only 14 years. Until the new laws work in reality, not just in theory, it may be too early to talk about their media as free.