Perspectives of the Press Council in Romania

• Author: Daniela Aurelia Popa
• Pages: 610-618

European Integration - Realities and Perspectives. Proceedings 2015

610

Perspectives of the Press Council in Romania

Daniela Aurelia Popa1

Abstract: A review of self-regulatory operational systems at international level can offer a practical vision on

media respon sibility tools such as press council, which represents the main focus of this study. The Press

Council is a flexible structure (Zlatev, 2011, p. 18) whose complexity depends on the political, cultural,

historic and cultural context of a country and the professional culture of the journalists. There are many

models of press councils, so we can conclude that there is no universal model, better or less good. This study

aims at providing the current prospects for the functioning of such an instrument of professional

responsibility of journalists in Romania and it is based on a qualitative research based on in-depth interview.2

Keywords: self-regulation; moral court; prestige; sanction

1. Introduction

As a tool for self-regulation media, the Press Council is an independent agency whose responsibility is

of monitoring the daily performance of mass-media (Dominick, 2009, p. 454) or a more complex

definition: that apolitical and non-governmental structure whose purpose is to ensure the smooth and

sane development of the life of information environment, particularly through monitoring the good

journalism practice and by judging cases of malpractice (Runcan, 2002, p. 324). The Press Council has

the following characteristics (Ristow, 2009, p. 5) it may cover written press and audiovisual media -

consisting of members such as journalists, representatives of public community, covering a wide

geographical area; it can be established by a statute - by: companies, professional media organizations

or independent groups.

Most northern European countries benefit from the existence of Press Councils, News Councils or

Mass-media Councils, which have expanded their activities and they are now responsible for

journalistic publications. Solving complaints against the mass-media remain a vital task of the Press

1 Assistant Professor, PhD, Danubius University of Galati, Faculty of Comunication and Intern ational Relations, Romania,

Address: 3 Galati Blvd, Galati, Romania, Tel.: +40372 361 102, Fax: +40372 361 290, Corresponding author:

daniela.popa@univ-danubius.ro.

2 For conducting interviews, the researcher has had a number of question s that have served as a guide for the interview and

which were addressed not in a strict order, but according to the conversational flow and the reactions interviewees. By

conducting interviews, the researcher was able to obtain the perceptions o f journalists on the objectives of the study. The

interpretation of the collected data was achieved by callin g the content analysis based on categories grid. Some text units

were coded accordin g to the main and secondary themes and text passages containing similar information were placed in a

grid of categories. For accurate rendering of relevant information were used both citations and paraphrases but only to

support the basic text. The interviews were conducted face to face, during February-April 2013 on a non-probability

sampling consisting of 15 people (journalists and media activists).