Why do Romanians no longer trust the mass media? Not only because there are media trusts that directly support certain parties, but also because these parties actually finance their propaganda with money received from the state budget.
Indirectly, therefore, the major media trusts are subsidized by the state to conduct propaganda. For example, according to Expert Forum, in 2025, parties spent nearly 50 million euros (244 million lei), a large part of which was used for propaganda through the press. Almost half of the funds received (48%) went directly or indirectly to media trusts that traditionally provided services to the parties.
The champion in spending on press propaganda is the PSD with 14.5 million euros (72.6 million lei), which represents 75% of the total budget received by the social democrats last year. In second place is AUR, which spent over 50% of state funds on propaganda, namely 4 million euros, followed by the liberals with 2.7 million euros and USR with 1.8 million euros.
Reporting on power and money from parties
Furthermore, although these funds reach various websites or television channels year after year, it is only during election campaigns that it is sometimes mentioned that it is about advertising.
In 2024, which was the year with the most elections in the last 20 years, parties and candidates for the presidency, mayoralties, and county councils used, according to Snoop and Expert Forum, at least 150 million euros from public funds for the so-called "communication campaigns."
ActiveWatch and Snoop revealed that television channels charged participating candidates 200,000 euros each, and the programs were labeled as electoral programs and moderated by the journalists of the respective channels. It is understood that it was a mutually profitable business between parties and television channels, with only the voters losing out. Perhaps this type of financial maneuver was noticed by readers and viewers, prompting them to move to social networks, some directly to TikTok as followers of Călin Georgescu.
Media institutions in Romania can be classified based on how they report on power and money received from parties:
- (1) There are trusts that aspire to independence and impartiality, with the most recent example being that of the public television, which, since Adriana Săftoiu took the lead, has even taken over the harsh investigation done by Recorder "Captured Justice," in which several magistrates described how politically accused or wealthy defendants benefited from successive postponements of trial dates until the offenses they were accused of were prescribed. TVR and the public radio, however, have often followed the government's lead;
- (2) There are websites that demonstrate their independence through investigations and daily topics (Recorder, Rise Project, G4media, Spotmedia, Hotnews, Context.ro, etc);
- (3) There are television channels that in various ways show their inclination towards one party or another, not only through the choice of guests, the silence on taboo subjects, but especially through various investigations: thus, before the 2024 elections, the liberals were directing over 1 million euros annually to the Digi24 website through an agency in exchange for articles that were not marked as advertisements; in contrast, PSD allocated 3.1 million euros through a single advertising agency to Antena 3, another 3 million to RTV, and 850,000 for B1 TV;
- (4) Nationalists and supporters of Russian politics have unrestricted access to Realitatea TV, where AUR allocated only 5 million euros for last year's presidential elections, in addition to websites that continue Moscow's propaganda and support for extremists.
A large part of the press is captured
In the annual report by Reporters Without Borders, where Norway (92.7 points) is in first place, Germany in 14th (82.17 points), France in 25th (76.68), the Republic of Moldova in 31st (74.77), Romania is in 49th place (67.71) between Uruguay and Armenia, while the United States is in 64th place between Botswana and Panama. For the first time, this ranking shows that over half of the world's countries (94) are in a "difficult" or "very serious" situation.
Five criteria are considered for the press freedom ranking:
- i) political context: measures the extent to which the press is subject to political or governmental interests;
- ii) economic context: measures the economic pressures on journalists, including financial constraints, media ownership, and corruption;
- iii) sociocultural context: measures social, ethnic, or religious pressures that can lead to self-censorship or harassment;
- iv) legal framework: measures the level of restriction or freedom imposed on journalists through laws and their enforcement;
- v) journalists' safety: measures the level of violence and threats against them.
Journalists are in the most difficult situation since 2002, when Reporters Without Borders began this global ranking, and the legal framework has deteriorated the most: laws on national security, counterterrorism, or the protection of state secrets increasingly restrict journalistic investigations.
Intimidation processes have the same purpose of stopping major investigations. The Platform of the Council of Europe for the Protection of Journalism and Journalists' Safety recently issued two alerts for Romania:
- 1) the smear campaign, harassment, and death threats against Emilia Șercan, who regularly publishes evidence of officials' plagiarism;
- 2) the situation of investigative journalist Brîndușa Armanca and the PressHub publication, facing multiple defamation lawsuits related to the articles published.
In Romania, a large part of the press is captured according to a report by the International Press Institute, but at the same time, there are many, albeit small, oases of freedom that expose corruption and interest groups that undermine public institutions. These small publications sometimes manage to be more powerful than the captured major trusts and tip the balance towards the good side of things.