Vivid Media February 2005

Regulars
MEDIA
When sensation dictates the agenda

by Alex Ulmanu
February 2005

Several girls appear in provocative postures in a series of images published on the Internet. A young man with a heightened sense of morality (or a huge appetite for publicity) learns that the girls are ninth grade students, and that the pictures had been taken at a high school in the small town of Zimnicea, in the county of Teleorman, about two hours drive from Bucharest. The young man, Marian Stancu, a Bucharest student, decides to send an anonymous email to the Ministry of Education and to a number of newspapers and television stations, to alert them to the indecency that appears prevalent at the school.

If this tale ended here, we wouldn’t be talking about this story – at least not in Vivid’s media page. But it didn’t. From the email, the ministry learnt that the media knew, and the media learnt that the ministry knew, about the case. Just as Stancu intended, ministry officials eager to show strong values and journalists in search of a scoop made a beeline for Zimnicea and put everybody in the school to the sword.

The problem was that the story turned out to be a complete fabrication. Neither the students - pictured kissing and fondling each other while semi-naked – nor any of the classrooms were from the high school at Zimnicea. But that didn’t deter print journalists, television crews, ministry inspectors and police officers interrogating students and staff for hours. A reporter from Evenimentul Zilei who visited the town after the dust had settled wrote Zimnicea townsfolk were shocked and disappointed at how their town had been depicted. One could only guess how the students and staff, not to mention the parents of the girls at the school, might have felt.

All this happened because a pack of reporters who wanted the story to be true couldn’t be bothered to check the accuracy of one tiny shiver of information – and because overzealous officials were too wary of the press to conduct a decent and thorough investigation. Instead, they put perfectly innocent people under the cosh and for a short while made their lives miserable.

And it went on. Hysteria burst in the media and in discussion forums, with Internet surfers, specialists and journalists desperate to figure out whether the girls were from Romania or from elsewhere. Pressured by the media, the state secretary for undergraduate education within the Ministry of Education announced it would ask all its inspectors to check all schools to see whether or not any classrooms or pupils look like those in the pictures.

Is this a real problem? Aren’t there other, more important issues faced by Romania’s education system?

''There are other, more pressing problems in schools, where people sell drugs, neighbourhood thugs ask students to pay protection money, and students bribe their teachers for grades,'' said Ioan Margarit, who runs Pressreview.ro, one of the first news channels to announce that the Internet girls were not from Zimnicea. Margarit blamed the journalists for their lack of standards, but also the ministry officials, who are, in his opinion, just as guilty, because they take such information for granted in order to demonstrate their zeal. ''The school’s director and pupils, who were interrogated, should sue for damages,'' Margarit said. ''That was the real attack on decency,'' he added.

The media have indeed failed to report in a consistent manner about the systemic problems faced by Romanian schools, which are often understaffed and poorly managed. Bribery is a common practice, with parents often having to bribe, either directly or indirectly, their children’s teachers. One form of hidden bribery is paying teachers for privately tutoring their children who would not pass their grades otherwise. Many schools demand mandatory financial contributions from parents for maintenance costs, often without issuing any receipts in exchange. Moreover, for significant exams such as the high school graduation exams, which are taken into account by tertiary institutions when evaluating admission applications, parents are often asked to contribute to the 'protocol' funds in order to buy the clemency of the teachers in the examination commissions.

High school students often tell stories of such abuse or neglect. Last year, I learnt from a 12th grader how she attended only one class the entire semester, because during the other classes, students and teachers would go out to the school’s backyard to smoke cigarettes and have barbecues.

Too few of these stories, some of which illustrate systemic issues, ever make it into the newspapers or television newscasts. It usually takes a sensational twist in order for such stories to surface – just as in the cases of the so-called ''Zimnicea girls'', or of the high school director who stripped a student during a school ball (another major media scandal two years ago).

One of the rare exceptions occurred last year, when several students from the Saint Sava high school in Bucharest came out and accused their physics teacher of forcing his students to translate his scientific works. Roxana Iosif, a young student, said the teacher was signing his translated works with the names of his students and sending them to a Warsaw international student contest. She also explained that the teacher was forcing students to take private lessons in order to pass the class.

At that time, US ambassador Michael Guest praised the children for their courage. ''What an extraordinary lesson for those who were afraid to take measures against corruption,'' he said.

Although the story received full media coverage, they failed to further search for similar cases – which are easy to find all over the country. After several days, the story was dropped, as journalists rushed toward other, more sensational news. The physics teacher kept his position, as have done many others like him.

When journalists realise such cases are merely the starting point for in-depth investigations into the real problems of society, one would be more likely to see more relevant coverage in the Romanian media.

Alex Ulmanu is the founder of Start Media and a lecturer in journalism.