Crushing of free media sparks worry

A COUNTRY has declared its media to be a potential threat to its national security. In the same week, it arrested one of the country's best-known TV journalists on allegations of blackmail and tried him in an overnight court hearing lasting several hours.

Yet Romania, where this series of events is still playing out, is a member of the European Union - and answerable to Brussels.

The arrest of Dan Diaconescu, the owner of Romanian national TV channel OTV and a popular chat show host, came just hours after the country's Supreme Defence Council (SDC) listed media as a serious national security threat alongside terrorism, corruption and organised crime.

Coupled with the government's anti-media stance, the incident has sparked comparisons to the restrictive regime of Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu.

The SDC, made up of the nation's president, the defence minister, Romania's intelligence chiefs and other senior officials, criticised "orchestrated media campaigns that denigrate state institutions by disseminating false information."

TV mogul Diaconescu, 42, could be described as a cross between Michael Parkinson and Jeremy Kyle. His nightly show, Dan Diaconescu Direct, is a talk show featuring interviews with Romanian celebrities, ordinary people with wild stories to tell - and even politicians.

Bucharest lawyer Mihaela Anghelu, who has spoken on Romanian television about Diaconescu's case, has claimed that the government was attempting to silence the country's media.

"We already live in a police state," she says. "In many ways it is worse than under the Ceausescu regime."

Diaconescu is a financially successful and powerful personality who has a strong hold over the Romanian population - and has therefore made himself unpopular with certain senior politicians.

His OTV channel, although mockingly dubbed "Zero TV" by some Romanians because of its tabloid content, is hugely popular. Just the day before his arrest, Diaconescu announced live on his show that he planned to form a political party. On his release from prison on bail two days later, he told the assembled media that he would stand for president in the 2014 elections.

Proof of Diaconescu's direct involvement in the allegations of blackmail is unclear. The alleged incident is understood to have happened around a year ago when Doru Prv, a self-proclaimed clairvoyant with a regular slot on Diaconescu's TV station, was accused of blackmailing a town mayor, Ion Motz, over some information he had on his personal wealth - and which he was planning to use on a forthcoming broadcast. Prv is alleged to have asked for 200,000 euros in return for not broadcasting the story.

Before the story was pulled, Diaconescu is understood to have mentioned it in passing on his nightly advertising bulletin.He has given a number of witness statements to the police since Prv was initially accused last year, but until his arrest at the end of June, was not considered to be a suspect.

Under the Ceausescu government, Romanian media was almost entirely censored and controlled by the state. Now, while Romanian TV stations and newspapers are mainly privately owned, most have an affiliation - in the form of financial backing - with some kind of political party. Diaconescu currently prides himself in his TV station being entirely independent.

"Without outside media, Romania stands no chance to change and will sink into a very well hidden pool of abuse, corruption, poverty and despair," says Nicole Formescu Anderson, a London-based Romanian who has campaigned for Diaconescu.

However, even if Diaconescu is found innocent and turned free to fulfil his political ambitions, his decision to form a political party will spell the end of the independent status of yet another Romanian media outlet.