Anger over Madalina Manole "interview"

22/07/2010

Romania's state news agency, Agerpres, is under attack for what critics say is a serious breach of journalistic ethics.

By Paul Ciocoiu for Southeast European Times in Bucharest – 22/07/10

The media has been criticised for the way it handled Manole's death. [Victor Barbu/SETimes]

Romania's state-run news agency Agerpres demoted Editor-in-Chief Marina Badulescu on Tuesday (July 20th), after she appeared before a disciplinary commission for publishing a forged interview with Romanian singer Madalina Manole, who commited suicide on July 14th.

The interview, published hours after Manole's death, was a compilation of excerpts taken from her blog and her previous statements, Pagina de Media, a media blog, disclosed.

"This is unacceptable. It is a crass violation of professional ethics," Chamber of Deputies Vice-President Victor Socaciu told Realitatea TV.

Four media organisations -- the Centre for Independent Journalism (CJI), ActiveWatch, the Media Organisations' Conventions and the Publicmedia Association -- filed a complaint Monday with the two parliamentary commissions that supervise the means of mass information.

"The very fact that this encroachment on principles was done by or with the approval of various persons with editorial responsibility of the highest rank within the agency calls into question the whole way in which Agerpres fulfils its public mandate," the four organisations said in a statement.

"Besides ignoring the privacy rights and the respect due to a deceased person, some journalists brutally infringed on the ethics concerning reports in case of suicide," they said. "We consider such practices harmful, both for the audience and for the profession itself, which is already [on its way to losing] credibility."

Badulescu, the editor at the centre of the controversy, defended her actions. She said Agerpres had not sought to promote the article as Manole's "final interview".

Media expert Iulian Comanescu told SETimes that some of the Agerpres staff who worked on the article were unaware of its fraudulent nature.

"This title, the interview, which sounds cynical under the given circumstances, comes from the fact that one of the editorial managers at Agerpres was also tricked by the forgery, that he knew nothing about," he said.

"Such things have happened before, not only in the Romanian media. They occur most of the time in the entertainment field," Comanescu said.

Manole's death set off a battle between television stations for audience ratings, with some of them even broadcasting her funeral live.