Mircea Marian: “There’s nothing more annoying for the Romanian press than being told she isn’t quite that innocent anymore”.

Fire, crime, rape! The fourth pillar of our fragile democracy is falling apart! Let there be a cruel punishment for the criminal who dared to say that among the angelic figures of the Romanian press, lie a few that write for checks!

The whole country witnesses the journalists personal drama. President Traian Basescu, this Putin of Romania, offended them. I can’t recall whether the floods in Tarlisua –where 10 people have died- have received this sort of coverage.

And the again, what happened? President Basescu allowed himself some remarks that, had us worried too, and we believe the media are the watchdog of democracy.

Let’s not pretend we don’t know what the President reffered to. Basescu didn’t blame the thousands of honest journalists who write about sports, or social events. He pointed out at a rather small group of influential political journalists. Even by chance, the opinions of these analysts are 100% similar to their employers.

And, in some happy cases, we know who pays them. We often hear, lately, of such journalists that receive checks in order to praise their protector. It’s because a wrongly interpreted pack solidarity that we pretend we never heard of such practices.

Yet, we’d rather hang Basescu when we he hast the guts to teach morality to us. Who benefits from this solidarity? A counselor, who was member of a state agency which supervised privatizations, during Adrian Nastase’s Government.

In that period, the social democrat Executive used state advertising – including the one from the AVAS – in order to blackmail or bribe the press. Journalists were permanently under the pressure of praising the accomplishments of that Government or risked to be asked feature reports from the other end of the country.

I don’t recall a major protest against such practices of the Nastase Government, during the 2001 – 2004 period.

Why are the journalists who were suspiciously silent in those times, trying to defend the “euro jukeboxes”? Do they want to see Basescu dressed repenting, and torturing himself, for three days and nights in front of the “House of the Free Press”, until Cristian Tudor Popescu himself will arise to forgive his sins? I doubt that will ever happen.

I had the same reaction as the Medical College, who witnesses too many articles related to malpraxis, or like the Superior Council of Magistracy, who sees our accusations of corruption in Courts.

We managed to proof to our own public that we feel guilty and don’t have the courage to admit our own sins.