Journalists, representatives of civil society and civic organizations have signed an open letter expressing their solidarity with the editorial staff of the Recorder, after its journalists were slated following its expose of Romania’s judicial system.
The two-hour documentary called ‘Captured Justice” which was aired this month investigates serious, structural problems in the judiciary and alleges a clampdown on basic judicial norms and freedoms and political interference.
The revelations triggered a wave of protests in several cities around the country and hundreds of judges and prosecutors have aligned themselves with the accusations in the documentary.
“We, the signatories of this open letter, stand in solidarity with the Recorder editorial staff and strongly condemn the attacks on their work, which we consider lacking factual basis and motivated,” the letter said.
“We are also confident that the public is able to distinguish between journalism carried out in the public interest and propaganda aimed at preserving a the current state of affairs intact for the limited benefit of those who profit from it,” the letter reads which was signed by 1,000 journalists and civic organizations.
Universul.net director Alison Mutler and editor-in-chief Laurentiu Mihu were among the journalists who signed the letter which was published Wednesday.
Here is the letter in full:
The undersigned, journalists who carry out our activity constantly taking into account the public interest, condemn the repeated and aggressive attacks to which our colleagues from the Recorder editorial office have been subjected.
These attacks come both from state institutions and from people who, hiding behind a press card, systematically aim to discredit their work and promote conspiracy theories meant to undermine public trust in the honesty, rigor and value of the reports produced by the Recorder.
We believe that the assault of the last week on the editorial office of the Recorder – which can be seen in insinuations, invectives and insults – is, fundamentally, an assault on an entire profession.
The central role of journalists is to inform citizens about how people in public office carry out their duties: with what level of competence, with what results and with how much integrity.
Public offices exist to serve the public, and the mission of the journalist is to constantly question those in positions of power and decision-making about how they carry out their responsibilities.
The current situation is all the more worrying as some of the most serious attacks launched after the Recorder documentary “Justice Captured” was broadcast come from within the judicial authority itself.
In this regard, we consider particularly serious the accusations made against the work of the Recorder journalists in the press conference organized by the Bucharest Court of Appeal (CAB), as well as those in the press release of the Section for Judges of the Superior Council of Magistracy.
The CAB management refers to a press investigation accusing that it is part of a “campaign to destabilize the judiciary”, which it sees as a “public instigation against the constitutional order”, in fact two crimes against national security provided for by Article 368 and Article 397 of the Criminal Code.
Moreover, Liana Arsenie, president of the CAB, made the same serious accusation against the Romanian Television – a public institution that rebroadcast the Recorder documentary “Captured Justice”.
Statements from the same register were also made in a press release released by the Section for Judges of the Superior Council of Magistracy.
These attacks take place in the conditions in which both Liana Arsenie, president of the CAB, and Lia Savonea, president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, refused, in writing, the invitations to interview sent by the Recorder before the publication of the press material. By their refusal, the two chose not to express their point of view on the information presented, although they were explicitly offered this possibility, and subsequently publicly challenged the content of the documentary.
The discourse of the judicial authority against the journalism practiced by the Recorder editorial office – a journalism exercised, also in this case, exclusively in the public service – manifested itself in a register never seen in the entire history of the judicial system.
Through tone and content, this discourse is close to the rhetoric of some publications and television stations that practice the systematic discrediting of journalists who, in compliance with the standards of documentation and verification of information, bring to the attention of the public major dysfunctions of society.
We note that part of the concerted attack on our colleagues is also launched by the same sources of falsehoods and disinformation that the National Audiovisual Council has been fining for years, but continue to be licensed as sources of public information programs.
Under these circumstances, we ask the National Audiovisual Council to respect its role as a fundamental guarantor of the public interest and to take action in the case of the programs with disinformative content that targeted our colleagues from the Recorder in recent days.
The documentary “Captured Justice” complies with international professional standards of documentation and verification of information, including the principles of traceability of public sources and protection of anonymous sources.
It is essential to emphasize that, so far, almost a week after its publication, none of the evidence on which the Recorder based its documentary – no factual information, no date, no figure, no name, no chronology – has been proven to be false or even inaccurate.
We, the signatories of this open letter, stand in solidarity with the Recorder editorial staff and strongly condemn the attacks on their work, which we consider to be factually groundless and motivated, in some cases, by obvious interests. We also trust that the public is able to distinguish between journalism carried out in the public interest and propaganda aimed at preserving a state of affairs for the limited benefit of those who profit from it.
We also invite representatives of civil society or civic organizations, people aware of the social importance of journalism in the public interest, to join us and sign this open letter.
