Romania MASS MEDIA
Casa Scīnteii, publishing house for major periodicals, Bucharest
Courtesy Scott Edelman
In the late 1980s, the media continued to serve as
propaganda,
indoctrination, and disinformation tools to develop
support for the
regime's domestic and foreign policies and to consolidate
Ceausescu's personal power. The system of media control
was highly
centralized and involved an interlocking group of party
and state
organizations, supervising bodies, and operating agencies,
whose
authority extended to all radio and television facilities,
film
studios, printing establishments, newspapers, and book
publishers
and to the single news agency. The control apparatus also
regulated
public access to foreign publications, films, newscasts,
books, and
radio and television programs.
The 1965 Constitution promised freedom of information,
but
expressed the reservation that it "cannot be used for aims
hostile
to the socialist system and to the interests of the
working
people." In 1971, following a trip to China, Ceausescu
reinforced
PCR authority over the highest information-control and
policy-
making bodies in the government. The former State
Committee for
Culture and Art, which was an element of the Council of
Ministers,
was reconstituted as the Council for Socialist Culture and
Education and answered directly to the Central Committee
of the
PCR. Similar changes were made in the Committee of Radio
and
Television, which became the Council of Romanian Radio and
Television. In 1985 a joint party-state organization, the
National
Council for Science and Education, chaired by Elena
Ceausescu, was
created. Its responsibility was to ensure uniform policy
implementation in science, technology, and education, and
it
provided the regime another mechanism with which to
control
educational activities.
The propaganda and media section of the Central
Committee
exercised general guidance and supervision of all
publications and
dissemination procedures. Its policies and directives, in
turn,
were implemented by such government-controlled agencies as
the
Romanian Press Agency and the individual publishing
houses,
printing establishments, book distribution centers, motion
picture
studios, and radio and television stations.
The UN's Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
(UNESCO), which collects statistics from all member
states,
reported that during the 1980s the number of Romanian
daily and
periodical publications dropped sharply. Whereas in 1969
Romania
published fifty-one dailies, twenty-three weeklies, and
two semi-
weeklies, in 1985 there were only thirty-six dailies and
twenty-
four weeklies. Daily newspapers had a total annual
circulation of
more than 1.1 billion copies. Major mass organizations,
government-
sponsored groups, local government organs, and the PCR and
its
subsidiaries published the most important and influential
newspapers, both in Bucharest and in the various
judete.
Little latitude was allowed either in the content or
format of the
news.
The most authoritative newspaper, Scīnteia, was
founded
in 1931 as the official organ of the Central Committee of
the
Communist Party and in the late 1980s had by far the
largest daily
circulation. It was the outlet for party policy
pronouncements and
semiofficial government positions on national and
international
issues. Until the early 1970s, Scīnteia was
published as an
eight-page daily, but thereafter it was condensed to four
pages
with one six-page issue per week. Its editorials, feature
sections,
and chief articles were frequently reprinted or excerpted
in the
provincial newspapers, shop bulletins, and enterprise
newsletters.
After Scīnteia, the most important daily was
Romānia
Libera, established by the Socialist Unity Front in
1942.
Although the paper featured items of national and
international
interest, it concentrated on local issues. The only paper
allowed
to publish one-page advertisement sections, Romānia
Libera
was in great demand. During the 1970s, the daily
Munca,
published by the UGSR, became a weekly publication.
Scīnteia
Tineretului, which addressed the younger element of
the
population and stressed the ideological and political
training of
youth as the basis for a "sound socialist society," was
another
national daily. The most widely circulated
minority-language
newspapers were the Hungarian daily Elöre and the
German
daily Neuer Weg. Both publications generally
repeated the
news of the national newspapers but also featured items of
minority
interest. They promoted the official government position
on such
sensitive issues as Romanian-Hungarian tensions and served
as
mouthpieces for anti-Hungarian propaganda.
The number of periodicals also decreased in the 1970s
and
1980s. Whereas in 1969 there were 581 Romanian
periodicals, in 1985
there were only 422. All periodicals were considered
official
publications of the various sponsoring organizations and
were
subject to the same licensing and supervising controls as
newspapers. Virtually all magazines and journals were
published by
mass organizations and party- or government-controlled
entities,
such as institutes, labor unions, cultural committees, and
special
interest groups. They covered a broad range of subjects
and
included technical and professional journals, among them
magazines
on literature, art, health, sports, medicine, statistics,
politics,
science, and economics.
Established in 1949, the Romanian Press Agency
(Agentia
Romāna de Presa--Agerpres) operated as a department of
the
central government under the control of the PCR Central
Committee.
Agerpress had exclusive rights to the collection and
distribution
of all news, pictures, and other press items, both
domestic and
foreign. In the 1980s, Agerpress increasingly concerned
itself with
reporting official ceremonial (protocol) events and
foreign news.
For foreign dissemination, it issued the daily
Agerpres News of
the Day and the weekly Agerpres Information
Bulletin.
For domestic consumption, Agerpres distributed about
45,000 words
of foreign news coverage daily to various newspapers and
periodicals and to radio and television broadcasting
stations. It
also provided articles from Western wire services to
government and
party officials in classified bulletins. The Agerpres
network of
press correspondents in foreign countries was largely
dismantled
after several defections, and in 1989 Agerpres maintained
only a
few correspondents in the other East European countries.
After 1960, recognizing the importance of radio as a
medium for
informing the public and molding attitudes, the regime
launched a
large-scale effort to build broadcasting facilities and
manufacture
receiving sets. The number of radio receivers increased
from 2
million in 1960 to 3.2 million in 1989. Receivers and
amplifiers
that reached group audiences in public areas were
installed
throughout the country.
In the 1980s, Romanian radio broadcast three programs
on medium
wave and FM. Until the mid-1980s, there were also six
regional
programs, with transmission in Hungarian, German, and
Serbo-
Croatian. Each week about 200 hours of broadcasts in
thirteen
languages were beamed to foreign countries by Radio
Bucharest.
Since its inception in 1956, television broadcasting
has been
closely linked with radio as an increasingly important
instrument
of "propaganda and socialist education of the masses."
Like radio,
television operated under the supervision of the Council
of
Romanian Radio and Television, whose policy guidelines
were
received directly from the party apparatus. Television
frequently
came under close scrutiny and criticism by the Central
Committee
and by national congresses on "socialist education." At
the June
1982 Central Committee plenum and again in 1984, Ceausescu
denounced the "polluting" influence of Western propaganda
and its
impact on literary, theatrical, film, and artistic
broadcasts and
stated that radio and television should report current
events from
a Marxist-Leninist perspective.
In 1989 there were approximately 3.9 million television
sets in
Romania. Following the energy crisis of 1984, the two TV
channels
were merged and broadcasting was reduced from 100 to 22
hours per
week. Programs in Hungarian and German were dropped.
Because of
these cutbacks and the greater ideological content of the
broadcasts, the number of viewers actually declined, and
some
citizens resorted to building their own antennae to
receive
Bulgarian and Soviet programs.
Before World War II, Romania was one of the leading
book-
publishing nations in southeastern Europe. But after 1948,
the new
communist regime nationalized all publishing facilities
and made
the publishing industry a propaganda and indoctrination
instrument.
From 1955 to 1966 the number of titles gradually
increased,
reaching a plateau of about 9,000. In the following
decades,
however, book publishing declined dramatically, and in
1985 only
3,063 titles were published--about one-third as many as
during the
1960s. Not only the number, but also the variety of books
published
during the 1970s and 1980s was reduced. By far the largest
number
of titles credited to a single author was attributed to
Ceausescu,
whose writings were published in Romanian and in foreign
languages
in large printings.
The Council for Socialist Culture and Education
controlled all
printing and publishing activities. It formulated policy
guidelines
for the publishing industry and used other government
agencies, the
various publishing houses, and book distribution centers
to
supervise and coordinate day-to-day operations. The
council
allocated paper, determined the number of books to be
printed, and
set the sale prices of publications. The number of
publishing
houses declined from about twenty-five in the early 1970s
to
eighteen in the late 1980s.
Film production, distribution, and exhibition also
operated
under the supervision of the Council for Socialist Culture
and
Education. There were two production studios--one in
Bucharest that
produced documentaries, newsreels, cartoons, and puppet
films, and
another in Buftea (near Bucharest) that made feature
films.
Until the late 1960s, Romanian films reflected a strong
French
influence. Both the native and co-produced pictures of
this period
were of high quality, and several won awards at
international film
festivals. In later years, however, the regime repressed
artistic
expression in the film industry, and as a result, fewer
and lower-
quality films were made. In 1985 only twenty-six films
were
produced. Furthermore, according to UNESCO statistics,
fewer
foreign films were allowed into the country. Whereas in
1968
Romania imported 188 feature films, in 1984 the number
declined to
72. Also noteworthy is that in 1968 approximately 40
percent of
imported films came from the Soviet Union, while 60
percent were
from the West, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic
Republic
(East Germany), but in 1985 no films were imported from
the West
nor from any hard-currency country.
Data as of July 1989
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