Call for protection : situating journalists in post-cold war Romania in a global media development discourse

This study deals with the development of journalism in post-Cold War Romania, and it does so with a particular interest in the transnational dimension this entails. Many NGOs and international organizations are currently seeking to monitor journalists' situations in countries around the world, while at the same time aiming at having the whole world aligned with international standards of the journalistic profession. Much attention is put on the safety of individual journalists and on the need to protect them from both legal and physical harm. Reports are continuously launched, frequently worded to impart a sense of emergency, effectively linking putative universal values of journalism with the image of vulnerable journalists carrying out dangerous work for the benefit of large publics. Romania is a fertile place for this kind of global activism, partly due to the country's totalitarian past and to what many commentators see as an unfulfilled process of democratization where powerful media owners and executives influence journalistic standards with business interests foremost in mind, and where harassments of journalists have been on the rise during the last decade. By combining an ethnographic account of the journalism field with an exploration of how global media development activities are operating in contemporary Romania, the prime question of the thesis is how journalism is constructed and made meaningful in a transnational context. The study is based on ethnographic material collected during the period of 2000-2002 among journalists and NGO activists in Bucharest, Romania.