Media not having access to the Parliament’s sessions is not the journalists’, but the society’s problem

I am nostalgic about the time when Dumitru Diacov was President of the Parliament. Not that I admire the current honourable president of the Democratic Party, but because, at the time, limiting journalists’ access to the Parliament sessions was unconceivable. We were free to walk everywhere in the building, we would enter any office and we had everything we needed in the session room. Our written press colleagues were provided a press gallery in the centre of the back room, while camera operators and photographers were not only free to walk on the last line of the amphitheatre, but were also allowed to walk the main stairs in the room to take frontal shots.

When communists acceded to power, the rules changed and more SIS (intelligence) and SPP (state protection and guard service) agents were brought. However, things degenerated after April 7, 2009, when the legislative had to hold its sessions at the Republic’s Palace. There were as many intelligence agents as accredited journalists. The press was shown to some sort of a pen surrounded by ropes. Camera operators and photographers could arrive in front of the room only by one, and only under the supervision of the watchful men in blue caps.

What followed was members of parliament returned to their renewed building made journalists feel like black citizens of South Africa during apartheid. We no longer had the right to get into the building through the main entrance, but through the back door of an addition designed after the reconstruction of the building. Moreover, the session room is, from now on, only for the „white persons”, i.e. for members of parliament.

Journalists are offered to reflect the legislative activity crowded in a room with two tables and a few chairs, watching the plenary sessions on two monitors. To hinder journalists’ free access in the room, the Parliament spent huge public money to install video cameras and hire personnel to ensure broadcasting to the „media’s pen”. The broadcasting director hired by Corman is so skilled in choosing the cameras to broadcast from, that there were situations when the media found out post-factum about communists having left the session room right at the beginning of the session as a protest, and having not participated in the parliament’s debates and voting. Isn’t this a classical sample of manipulation, censure and lie?

Our Parliament tries to provide us an ideal image, without verbal and physical fights, scuffles, scandals or protests. In the event of something like this, journalists are provided no image and/or sound. They are not free any more to enter the building to ask MPs questions, statements or replies, as they used to be. The “speakers” are brought in the same narrow pen, where, meanwhile, some of our colleagues record their reports, others report live or talk on the phone. This North-Korean style is how the “democratic” government of a country with European aspirations believes it should interact with the media and with the society, it serves and whose money it spends. 

In the last 20 years, the number of MPs has not changed – they are still 101. Why then in the past, there was place for both MPs and the media, but after the reconstruction of the building, when the session room was enlarged, there was no more place for the media? Spending public money to harm the national interest seems to me criminal and reprehensible. When Vlad Filat, the prime minister at the time, presented the journalists the initial project, there was a separate press gallery. But, His/her Highness the MP claims his/her right not to be disturbed. He/she does not like to be recorded while sleeping, or playing Angry Birds on the tablet or smartphone, reading newspapers, telling jokes or texting somebody. Even if we believed MPs are not ill-minded and they really cannot work when accredited journalists “assault” the room, the best and right way to solve this would not be to isolate the media, but to design the room taking into account the actual needs and the principle of public interest supremacy.

The comfort of 101 individuals cannot prevail over the right of more than 3 million citizens to know how laws are made in this country.  One of the fundamental democratic principles – access to information is walked over by those who parade with European values. As professional journalists, we are outraged they humiliate us like this, making us unable to obtain our own the videos, information and interviews we need, and forcing us to kiss the government’s foot.

Media not having access to the Parliament’s sessions is not the journalists’, but the society’s problem. The taxpayers are entitled to be duly informed on the activity of those they voted and pay. They have the right to know who and how adopts the laws that change their lives, and such right is now refused.
 

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The article was published within the Advocacy Campaigns Aimed at Improving Transparency of Media Ownership, Access to Information and promotion of EU values  and integration , implemented by the IJC, which is, in its turn, part of the Moldova Partnerships for Sustainable Civil Society project, implemented by FHI 360.
 
This article is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The content are the responsibility of author and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.