What is happening to Digi24. The cartelization of news TV

Digi24 news TV has long been a necessary alternative to Antena 3 and Romania TV on the relevant market, offering a reasonable option beyond pure propaganda TV stations. Featuring a good editorial agenda, good quality content, and balanced journalistic approaches, Digi24 was quickly established within a quality niche that does not generate spectacular audiences but addresses an influential public.

Importantly, it supported the pro-justice discourse, despite reasons to turn against it. However, in the last few weeks something has happened, as it became increasingly visible that Zoltan Teszari’s station has surrendered to the powers that be.

The dismissal of several important journalists from Digi24, the closure of local stations, the elimination of specialized broadcasting and investigative journalism segments, the beheading of the website’s editorial team, the removal of critical views on the PSD-ALDE coalition, and the display of a more friendly attitude towards Dragnea and Tariceanu’s parties are all facts that accompany a visible change of course.

How is this to be explained ? Information obtained by G4Media.ro indicates that the major commercial interests of the trust, especially those in the telecom and energy sectors, have led to a rapprochement with those in power. The 5G license bid will take place this year, and RCS-RDS, the company that feeds a good several million Euros annually to Digi24, will bid alongside other major mobile operators.

In this business Teszari depends on the government and local PSD leaders’s willingness to expand the fiber optic network and obtain other authorisations. He can not pull the fiber optic without their consent, it is not clear if the thousands of km of cable he pulled already was done legally, and in general can not expand his stock listed company without a lot of state authorisations. A TV station has been good as long as it has not caused major business damage, but it has now become a liability and an entity that absorbs a lot of funds while generating problems.

In January 2019, the administrator of RCS / RDS, Ioan Bendei and the former head of the Romanian Football Federation, Mitica Dragomir, were sentenced by the Bucharest Lower Court to four years in prison regarding the sale of broadcasting rights for football matches. The court also ordered a criminal fine of RON 1,250,000 for RCS / RDS.

The decision is not final, but the conviction has certainly played a significant role in the Digi24 path change. Teszari has probably felt abandoned by the system that he has invested in. In fact, the first signs of surrender appeared upon making peace with Dan Voiculescu’s TV station. In June 2018 RCS and Antena Group announced the signing of a contract that ended all disputes, after years of conflict, when Antena 3 always referred to Digi24’s secret service alleged links and ridiculed its audience. After this armistice was signed, Antena 3 began broadcasting RCS-RDS commercials, and Digi24 promoted Antena Group products.

The criminal conviction of the RCS administration hastened the decision to change the editorial agenda, and Emergency Decree 114 persuaded Zoltan Teszari to surrender. In December 2018, when the government adopted the so-called « greed tax », which charges 3% on the energy and telecom companies turnover, Premier Dăncilă’s adviser Darius Vâlcov launched the decisive torpedo in the direction of the trust.

„The two major players on this market (Orange and Vodafone) paid last year a profit tax of 7.2 per thousand and 9 per thousand respectively, if we refer to turnover. A third, which I do not want to name, but which also includes a TV station (RCS & RDS / DIGI), has paid a profit tax of 5 to 10 million, that is 0.00005%. More precisely 1.577 lei for a turnover of 3.3 billion lei, „Vâlcov said on 21 December 2018.

Given all of these blows and with the prospect of big business being blocked, Teszari unscrupulously sacrificed the main hindrance to his business: its media trust. As long as he could use it to boost his big business, he accepted a loss of several million euros a year, perceived as an investment. But when investment in the press proved to be a long-term loss, he nixed it in no time. Digi24 is no longer a news station, but rather a propaganda organ at the service of the powers that be. We shall see if the knee was bent to Dragnea or Tariceanu.

I have seen this behavior recur in most of the big Romanian media entrepreneurs, who have never conceived of the media as a business in itself and have never believed in its social value. All large and small moguls treated the press and journalists only as a tool at the disposal of power, in exchange for other benefits. For this reason, even when the station worked with a correct agenda, the journalists there never enjoyed absolute editorial freedom, but one conditioned by a very perfunctory mechanism of self-censorship.

An effective method of imposing self-censorship, patented by the Digi24 bosses, proved to be the conclusion of fixed-term contracts, usually up to six months, and the extension of these contracts to the maximum prescribed by the law, i.e three times. All of these journalists knew by themselves what they can and can not say / write. Then the many unexpected and unexplained firings were symbolic within the editorial office, stalling enthusiasm. Freelance journalists were usually accused of being too aggressive towards the powers that be. Most of the station’s journalists caught on, with a few notable exceptions who have and will continue to practice their trade as long as possible, spearheaded by the likes of Cristian Tudor Popescu.

Significantly, by 2013, one of the people with informal power of administrative and editorial decision in Digi24 was at one point Vasile Dîncu, a politician with strong connections in the system.

These are the key facts of Digi24’s capitulation, but the general phenomenon is trully worrying. In a year with two (Euro-parliamentary and presidential) elections, the PSD-ALDE coalition has succeeded in bringing all news TV stations to its feet.

This quasi-total subordination is unprecedented in recent years. The subordination by all big media trusts to the leaders in power is unprecedented. Realitatea TV only has Rares Bogdan’s show, while the editorial direction given by Guşa after meeting with Ghita and Andronic in Belgrade is quite clear.

The major imbalance in the TV market will also be felt in online publications. By increasing state subsidies, parties have become much richer and have begun to buy editorial and journalistic content in bulk. See Newsweek revelations and the list of analysts and journalists who took money from party subsidies.

For EPE, for example, PSD has a campaign budget of between 6 and 8 million euros (according to G4Media.ro). And the other parties will try to influence the content of the publications having incomparably higher resources on hand. We talk about money that no longer enters the accounts of editors, but legally, on a contract basis.

There will be very few to refuse them. The consequence: we will have more propaganda, as if Antena 3, Romania TV and their online tube trumpets were not enough. We are practically witnessing the constitution of the largest power support cartel ever known in Romania. Only in neighboring Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban did something comparable, with the difference that his people bought almost all of the press trusts upfront and did not align them through non-transparent agreements.

For this reason, supporting the few independent journalism islands becomes vital in order not to die suffocated in a sea of propaganda and half-truths. An elderly journalist said that the press freedom ends when money ends. Independent media needs funds.

There are but a few free breathing outlets of free press left, indomitable operations bent on performing their duty to the public, with no business or political masters at their helm.

Traducerea: Ruxandra Stoicescu