Vivid Opinion November 2004

Regulars
OPINION
A fearless newspaper director clears his desk

by Tom Gallagher
November 2004

Cornel Nistorescu, the editor of Romania’s biggest selling daily, Evenimentul Zilei (News of the Day), lost his job at the end of September. Perhaps he was lucky not to suffer the deadlier fate of assassination by bullet or in a contrived car accident, the fate of many journalists in neighbouring Russia who have refused to kowtow to ruthless and powerful interests.

Several of his own journalists were beaten up in 2003 when they reported in detail how some of the regional bosses of the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) were buying judges or diverting state resources into their own pockets. The PSD is the heir to the communists who ruled Romania with an iron fist until 1989. Prime Minister Adrian Nastase and his lieutenants have a monopolistic approach both to political power and private property. Their wealth already dwarfs that of most elected leaders in EU states, while most Romanians try to subsist on poverty wages. Not a few of those inside and near to the PSD have transferred the most lucrative state assets to their hands and indeed are busy looting EU funds being lavished on Romania prior to its entry as a full member in 2007.

The Defence Minister, Ioan Mircea Pascu delivered a chilling warning to journalists in 2002 when he said: ''Life is short and your health has too high a price to be endangered by debating highly emotional subjects.'' Nastase himself declared in December 2003: ''If a mere article was the pretext for a beating, I would be beating up journalists every day.'' PSD notables have been infuriated by the ability of investigative reporters to expose the unsavoury deeds of the powerful. Long-suffering Romanians weighed down by bad rulers treat editors who refuse to be bought and intrepid news hounds as public heroes.

Nistorescu enjoys strong national recognition and if he stood for president, he would have a real chance of shaking up a power structure that in many ways is democratic in name only. In his regular columns for EZ since becoming its director in 1997, he initiated a dialogue with his readers that reacquainted them with the past that had been policed with Orwellian rigidity in communist times. He frequently referred to growing up in the town of Orastie in southern Transylvania. He recalled the characters from his youth such as the indomitable Saxon neighbours who rebuilt their house after returning from deportation to Siberia, hoping for better times, only to find that the regime collectivised their land - but still they never gave up. After his visits back to his birthplace, he would describe how peasants were still exploited by the ex-managers of the cooperatives who had allied with other corrupt officials to divest them of their savings in various banking scams.
Nistorescu, who is 56, made a number of compromises in communist times that enabled him to practice the craft that he loved. He has never denied this but, as soon as it became possible to write unfettered by the censor’s dead-hand, he set to work trying to build a strong independent press. Since 1990 he has shone a probing beam into all the shady corners of post-1989 Romania. There were no underhand dealings in high places that escaped his attention. He was among the first journalists to take the measure of Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the xenophobic rabble-rouser who, at the end of the day, is an agent of Iliescu and Nastase ready to smear their opponents in order to solidify their hold on power.

Nistorescu has weaned Romanians away from a national obsession with conspiracy theories that had a powerful hold over millions well into the 1990s. He has shown that the country’s problems are rarely due to a hidden hand or ancient enemies beyond the frontier but can more often than not be laid at the door of feckless, dishonest or malevolent politicians and their allies among the nouveaux riche or in the intelligence sector. He has spoken frankly to Romanians, chastising them for their incapacity to organise themselves, pointing out that it would only take a few resolute people able to agree among themselves to make changes in the neighbourhood or in the block. He has described the arrangements which enable the society to function despite being choked by regulations: I still recall a brilliant editorial describing just how petty bribes enables the nightmare of registering a car to be resolved.

Though Nistorescu has often been angry and impatient with the shabby and duplicitous reality of living in modern Romania, he has never succumbed to cynicism or despair about the future which more than a few political intellectuals have done. Despite having done well materially from his career in media, he has remained in touch with ordinary people. He articulates their frustrations and aspirations. He believes in their essential worth and decency and their capacity to make Romania a normal society that some time in the future will no longer be noted for corruption or other flagrant abuses of power.

Nistorescu has been a real thorn in the side of Premier Nastase because he raises expectations and insists that Romanians should not be treated like zoo creatures who are thrown a few pre-electoral cookies and bananas and then abandoned and exploited until the next election. He has shown the origins of the PSD leader’s wealth, how he has benefited from a celebrated land deal in downtown Bucharest, and has satirised his pretensions as a patron of the arts or champion bear hunter. In response, the PSD has used Machiavellian methods to bring EZ to heel. Sometimes the whole edition of a newspaper will be bought up before it ever reaches the newsstands in a city where high-level corruption is exposed. State advertising revenue only goes to newspapers prepared to overlook government misdeeds and promote Nastase’s growing personality cult. Private companies who advertise in the independent media are warned that it will do nothing for their relations with the government. If they don’t get the message, an army of state inspectors will descend on them to examine their tax affairs or even the state of their fire-escape. New laws are constantly devised to restrict what reporters can cover. The latest one intends to prevent journalists publishing photographs of the sumptuous villas political notables have acquired from the state, often for nominal sums.

Sections of the press have played a vital role in creating an increasingly self-confident and mature public opinion ready to abandon the communist regimentation that was all Romanians knew for two generations. Until this month, it looked as if the independent media could hold out against Nastase. Prepared to overlook the takeover of the justice system by the PSD, the European Commission has at least been vocal about press freedom. Ambassadors from leading countries have visited newspaper officers on several occasions as a gesture of solidarity after assaults on journalists. And previously respected foreign media groups, WAZ in Germany and the Ringier press trust of Switzerland have bought major titles, promising to uphold press freedom.

But in recent months Ringier and WAZ have started to call for organisational changes. The timing has raised suspicions. Crucial parliamentary and presidential elections are a matter of weeks away. The PSD is fighting for its political life thanks to the anger of urban voters kept informed about low standards in high places by independent newspapers. On 6 September 43 journalists from Evenimentul Zilei published an open letter accusing the Swiss company of interfering in editorial policy for commercial reasons. It is alleged that Ringier is ready to tilt the newspaper towards the government because Nastase has promised to restore state advertising which will vastly boost its monthly profits. By the early autumn Nistorescu had been pushed out with alarming signs that the best of his team of investigative journalists and political analysts will soon follow.

Nastase remained tight-lipped in 2003 when some lower-level PSD enforcers hospitalised a string of local journalists. But he has played with kid gloves compared with the Russian moguls who do not hesitate to slay an intrepid reporter like Paul Klebnikov, who was killed in July and is merely the latest whose life has ended prematurely for uncovering the secrets of the powerful.

He is relying on the EU to allow Romania to join the Brussels club on flexible terms by 2007. Over 6 billion euros worth of taxpayers money has already been ladled out by the EU in often poorly-managed projects which have usually had little effect on Romania’s staggering economic and institutional problems. So he doesn’t want to rock the boat in the hope that even greater prizes will fall into the lap of the post-communist ruling class once Romania becomes a full member.

A newspaper like Evenimentul Zilei has raised expectations among Romanians that powerful forces who ruled in the communist era can be cut-down-to-size and eventually be replaced by a more honest and capable elite. It has also done an enormous service to the West by exposing critical weaknesses in branches of government that can impact on safety on Western streets. The unmasking of corrupt officials who help mafia figures to ship coerced women to work in the sex trade or others who are an important link in the shipping of drugs to EU states, has consequences beyond Romania. There are all sorts of people who should deeply regret the departure of an editor like Nistorescu whose vigilance and outspokenness has helped to gradually make Romania a normal country where it is beginning to be possible to do business and enjoy it in ways taken for granted in most other parts of Europe.

Tom Gallagher is Professor of European Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, England. His book, Theft of A Nation: Romania Since Communism was published in paperback by Hurst & Co last month.