Freedom – a condition for journalistic solidarity

It will be very trendy in the upcoming days to talk about journalistic solidarity. This is how it is in early May. Most likely, an advisor of a dignitary or oligarch is currently squeezing his or her brain to generate an elaborate message about the freedom of press, about how we should be an united profession, about the effort made by those high above us in order to ensure our professional freedom, etc. It’s nothing but bureaucratic rhetorics.
Solidarity is possible only among free journalists. Because you cannot be covertly in solidarity with the free press, but to actually work in the trust belonging to the power. You cannot condemn intimidation, restriction of access to information, threats aimed at your peers and the censorship while being there, in the trust. If you do it, the trust expels you. You lose the comfortable salary, you lose the stability and you will have to convince the profession that you cleaned up and that you are absolved of your sins, if you want to keep making a modest living from your writing, from journalism. The troubadours of the power have no need for solidarity. Nothing threatens them. However, for their own comfort, they live with the feeling that they represent the profession. The truth is that there’s more and more of them and at one point we might be a minority.

Temporary solution

My opinion expressed in this article is not meant to tear people apart. I am aware what is the reality in Moldova and, at the risk of contradicting myself, I dare to suggest heavy-heartedly a temporary solution that would reconcile everyone. Unfortunately it is not up to us, the journalists, but up to the media owners, regardless if they are politicians of various colours. For us to get off the barricades, it is needed that the media owners in Moldova would also adhere to the principles underlying the authentic journalism. Not words, but deeds. First of all this relates to journalism ethics. What will we get in exchange for this? They, the owners will get media businesses, not just a money-making cookie cutter. The journalists that are in the trust will not be ashamed anymore for what they are doing and they will not avoid anymore the few celebrations that bring us together. The one to get the most out of this is the society, which will consume information of a higher quality, put through a minimum ethics filter.
Journalists are working on the TV channels of ‘trust-1’ and ‘trust-2’. Most of them, after 2009, accepted some compromises that affected their reputation. I don’t want to judge them. I can’t even fathom what they are going through. I know many of them. Some of them made compromises because they were thinking about their families, about the loans they had taken. The labour market for a journalist in Moldova is quite limited. We used to appreciate them. We even used to give them awards. Now we call them media killers, fake news authors. Gradually they got rid of remorse. They worked too long in an institutional field where no journalism principles are applied. This led to the slippages we see today and that will perpetuate as long as we are on the barricades and unless we try to involve the media owners into an honest discussion about ethics. Attention! This does not mean solidarity with the ones that disrespect this profession, but a possible temporary solution for a minimum cleanliness in the media space. The key to overcoming the crisis is not solidarity, but commitment to some rules, dialogue and a public mechanism of discouraging the slippages.

Solidarity here and there

The need for solidarity with a journalist in a certain case does not stem from an obligation, but from the way you’re professionally built. And there is no need for a media union to supervise whether we were together or not in a specific case. Freedom is the essence of journalism. You whistle when you feel like whistling, not when you’re told to or when you see them all whistling. Indeed, there are cases when we have to join forces in a ‘coordinated’ way, so that we can fight back and block initiatives meant to shut us all up in one move. There were such attempts in 2017 too, when we stood, in front of the SCM, against the controversial regulation on anonymisation of the court decisions. Another action that had impact was the campaign with Xs and Zs instead of the names of dignitaries, as a reply to the government’s initiative to hide their abuses invoking the ‘protection of personal data’. We stood as a shield in front of Mariana Rata, who was threatened by prosecutors with a criminal investigation, but we blocked an initiative that would have doomed the investigative journalism in this country. We struck back, including by means of public actions, when the journalists from ‘Ziarul de Garda’ were obstructed from filming in front of the GBC building.

In these cases we managed to mobilise ourselves, to join forces and strengthen the relationship within the profession. Or a wing of the profession, to put it better. Things were not the same in case of Natalia Scobioala, who found herself dragged into court by a former Minister of Defence, just for the fact that she took over, quoting the source, some information from the on-line space, under a journalistic project funded from abroad. She cried as loud as Mariana did when she was summoned, but the profession did not hear her. Ironically, their cases are absolutely identical. Then who decides when and for whom our solidarity goes? NGOs? Does it depend on the fame of the harassed ‘victim’, on the colour of their clothes or on whether he or she has a journalism diploma or not? Or, does anyone believe that, in this case, there is no risk of creating a precedent? Someone threatened Natalia with a criminal investigation, too. Her blood froze when she received the summons. She was frightened. She cried. She looked for support. For an advice. For a lawyer. She avoided the criminal proceedings fighting on her own – a modest girl, barely weighing 40 kilos, against a former dignitary with businesses and lawyers. She never bragged about it, not even on Facebook. Why? Because she understood that the profession shows solidarity only sometimes and she’s got no diploma. She is just a seamstress with journalistic ambitions who happens to write well. Therefore, this is a case when we showed no solidarity because we did not care, not for political reasons. Perhaps there was a need for ‘a coordinator’ who would create a common chat? Perhaps.

Was ‘a coordinator’ also needed when Constantin Grigorita was banned from Igor Dodon’s press conferences? Then Constantin’s fellows missed the chance to teach the President (and not just him) a lesson he wouldn’t forget for his entire life: for all the attending journalists to boycott that press conference. However it did not happen! No one left Not even Constantin’s friends, while the President keeps humiliating him all this time, this case still being of interest only under the ‘gossip’ section for some TV channels.
No matter who we blame for this, the conclusion is the same: it’s worse than during the communist rule. Back then there was more solidarity among us, we were more united, more spontaneous and more robust.
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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 project, 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.