The laboratory and the experiment
“We are grateful to the Romanians because, practically, as in a laboratory, we see it as an experiment, and we, drawing conclusions, will see if we have tasks to avoid similar problems here, in Hungary.” These words by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the man held responsible for turning his country into a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy“, signify the global relevance of the recent developments in Romania.
Nearing the end of 2024, after already having voted in local and parliamentary elections, Romanian citizens thought they would be participating in what would be a normal presidential election. The evening of the results after the first round of voting jolted Romanian society, including the media, into chaos.
A man named Călin Georgescu, relatively unknown within Romania only weeks before voting, who polls predicted would garner no more than 8-10% votes, was making headlines. “On the day of the elections, when I was talking to different politicians who knew the numbers [from the polls that day], they were saying Mr. Georgescu will win the final. What? From 8% to being the second contender, that’s a huge difference! And they said no, he’s the first one not the second. He’s going to win!”, says Dan Duca, Editorial Director of HotNews.ro, recalling his near disbelief at what he was hearing.
And that is the story that begs for a deeper look. How Georgescu managed to sell an extreme but vague story to a substantial part of the population through social media, while most regular media, the professional storytellers, not only fell short of countering his worldview, but almost completely ignored him.
Telling a story that people want to hear
Who was this man who had flown under the radars of pollsters and the media? While there are online profiles of this far-right-supporting, anti-NATO, anti-vaxxer, Romanian journalist Cristian Lupșa’s description of Georgescu in his newsletter ‘Why Romania fell for an outsider’ captures his essence: “Think Trump: he makes little sense to most of us, but enough sense for a majority to elect him as president. He is also his own ideology, as none of the existing ones fit him.”
Come December 2024, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the presidential elections after security services warned of Russia’s ‘aggressive’ hybrid attacks against Romania. Allegedly benefiting from a TikTok campaign backed by the Kremlin, Georgescu ended up winning the first round with nearly 2.1 million votes mostly based on his popularity on TikTok. When de-classified by the Romanian government, documents revealed that “25,000 pro-Georgescu accounts on social media app TikTok burst into action just two weeks before the first-round.” On 9 March, Romania’s top electoral authority, the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC), barred Georgecu from the upcoming presidential election rerun citing conditions of “legality”, as he “violated the very obligation to defend democracy”, triggering violent protests. Though it is still a developing story with no clear end, it is important to go back to the start and ask a simple question: Why did Georgescu’s narrative resonate with so many people?
According to Lupsa, “He was the right storyteller for a story many want to hear.” People wanted to hear this narrative so desperately, he says, that journalism and fact checking were rendered insufficient to change people’s minds.
The media’s identity crisis
A conversation Alina Marculescu Matis, Editor-in-Chief of independent outlet Panaroma.ro, had around the time of the election is telling of the state of information crisis in Romania. When asked what she made of Georgescu’s rise, as a journalist, Alina tried to present facts about how some of the things he had promised were impossible to convert into policy and how most of his rhetoric was unsustainable. “When I gave her [the woman she was talking to] some examples of things he said in the past, I was blown away by her response. She said, ‘You know I keep hearing that with AI there are videos that are realistic, and maybe they’re fake. The videos with him saying all this stupid stuff are fake,” says Matis.
Lupsa writes, “This is not a clash of generations. It’s a clash of worldviews.” A polarization born out of the difference between a version of truth presented in what he calls “bite-size chunks, mostly video cuts”, and another version of truth presented by independent media that hardly ever encounters the worldview of someone on TikTok. What happens to the media in times of such dissonance? “Everything that happened since November-December and up to now”, says Matis, “has been an ongoing identity crisis for Romanian media on very many levels.”
The results of the first round were followed by immediate shock and what Matis calls “legitimate criticism”. How could the media not see it coming? “We were left scrambling. Between the first round and the second round which was eventually annulled, and even until now, we were playing catch up”, she says.
While it is easy to paint a picture in broad strokes and blame the media for failing to explain to citizens who Georgescu really is – and in many cases almost ignoring him – it is important to note that some small independent outlets did provide good coverage. An example people have used to make a case for supporting independent media.
Despite some reporting by independent media, Lupsa writes, “They just didn’t reach enough people. And major mainstream players give attention to candidates based on how high they show up in polls, and polls failed too.”
The cost of independence
In normal times, it would be usual for a media outlet to publish an interview with the ambassador of a country that their country has ongoing tensions with. Not in today’s Romania. When HotNews published an interview with the Russian ambassador, they faced sharp pushback for giving him a platform. Talking about the criticism HotNews faced and what he calls “the most polarized situation in Romania since the 90’s”, Duca says, “Our job is to talk to everybody, and of course in periods like this, it is not easy to keep up the middle path.”
While editorial challenges for independent outlets are obvious, an existential threat that sometimes goes unnoticed is on the financial front. Between the two rounds of elections, commercial advertisers fully pulled out from Panaroma.ro. Their argument? In such a divisive time, everything could be misconstrued as a political stance, which they were not ready for. Advertisers just wanted to ‘lay low’. “When they annulled the second round, they started coming back, but this was a wake-up call for us. As a manager, I was frightened thinking ahead,” says Matis, talking about how the last few months have forced not just Panorama, but a lot of independent outlets to re-think their business models.
Reflection and learnings
The developments in Romania over the last few months have given the media an opportunity to introspect, reflect and course correct on what they did right, where they went wrong and what they can do differently going forward. Matis is of the opinion that journalists might have fallen prey to arrogance. “Whenever we interacted with people who believe this point of view [Eurosceptic, far-right], we were like, ‘No, you’re wrong and this is why we’re right.’ You cannot reach them in that way.”
Does she have any learnings she would like to share with independent outlets outside Romania? “Not to underestimate the power of social media when it comes to pushing outlier voices,” she responds almost instantly. Panaroma has itself revamped its social media strategy and is now channeling resources towards youth-centric content for platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
While Dan Duca at HotNews agrees that journalism will have to adapt with the changing times, his bigger concern is about regulating social media. In the light of big tech platforms increasingly distancing themselves from their responsibilities, Meta’s decision to shut down its fact-checking unit in the US being the latest example, Duca wonders if Europe will take steps to control the barrage of hate on platforms such as Facebook and X. Drawing attention to a thin silver lining, he points out that even though TikTok has huge influence and a lot of users, the fact that small independent outlets like HotNews and others consistently top the charts of most visited websites every month only shows that there is appetite and demand for good journalism. All might not be as lost as it seems.
In the end, Lupsa captures the essence of the state of Romanian media where he writes, “Even though respectable journalism isn’t always believed (or is less and less trusted), we need it more than ever. And in Romania, once again, the best journalism was produced by smaller players, who don’t take state subsidies by the millions, and don’t serve a party agenda.”