Some of you may be familiar with the recent story of the Romanian government party (PSD) having the stenograms from their internal meetings made available to the large audience. Of course not by them but by an insider who was probably dis-satisfied with what was going on. Those scripts certainly don't put a good light on PSD, on the contrary, and for this obvious reason they were published only by a part of the Romanian media - namely by Evenimentul Zilei. The stenograms were also published on the internet but I am told the websites were taken down. Actually Evz (daily) and Catavencu (weekly) are the only Romanian papers that publicly criticized PSD and the government.
Now, apparently today's printed editions from both media vehicles contained their share of criticism to PSD and it looks like somebody made all the possible things to make them dissapear by buying the respective editions in bulks this morning. (Catavencu also acknowledges it on its website) My take is that this doesn't make much difference in the elections but for what it's worth if you care enough for knowing exactly what they contained here is the pdf version of the latest Catavencu edition and this is a website that made all the stenograms available both for reading or download (zip).
The pdf version of Catavencu's latest number is actually free for everybody, downloadable on their homepage. It is true that Catavencu and Evenimentul Zilei are the biggest critics (in terms of audience and impact) of the current government among the Romanian newspapers, but we should give some credit to Cotidianul, Romania Libera - a flawed credit (I won't digress here...), but still some credit :) And of course, there are throngs of websites and blogs that try to offer a clearer, rawer, un-manipulated picture of Romania - with my personal appraisal for www.revistapresei.ro Hoping things will turn out for the better on Sunday the 28th (and especially afterwards), Best Regards, Dan
Mea culpa, I haven't noticed Catavencu's free availability - anyways I guess two is better than none. :) As for the newspapers, Cotidianul has a good chance after it was recently bought by Catavencu - still IMO they have to go a long way. I personally don't like Romania Libera, even though it criticizes the government. ZF, Jurnalul National and Capital have good coverage sometimes - in rest I am not having too much of a good opinion of the Romanian media mainstream. I may be biased but they treat only 10% max of what I am interested in and that is usually news recycling with not too much value aded. Ah, let's not forget Dilema, but that stands in another category. As such I usually don't read press reviews and similar stuff (garbage in garbage out) and besides I like to make the source and news selections myself. Perhaps it is just a matter of taste :)
Where can I find a summary or important quotes? I'm too lazy to read the entire thing.
Well, I tend to agree with Dan, revistapresei.ro seems to be well presented, everything is categorized and the headlines are easy to read. My only comment would be the lack of the rss feeds. Probably in time they will solve that too. Apparently you can also find the stenograms there.
Hey, these PSD guys are sucking big time. Today, I got three spam mails to vote for PSD: ROMANIA TE CHEAMA! Acum, inainte de ziua decisiva, Romania are nevoie ca cetatenii ei sa o sustina. ...................... Voteaza pentru: Adrian Nastase, Presedintele tau, si Mircea Geoana, Primul tau Ministru. Yuck!
As far as I know, the publishing house Ziua have issued a book of all the stenographs. It costs 200,000 lei and is available from their web site.
Yeah, quick to make a (not so) honest buck... I like their "author" :"Collective" :) However, it's impressive how quick their editing and publishing was ! 3 days... wow. As for the stenographs' content, it's terrible. I was struck by our PM's apparent dictatorship among his "peers". freaky communists... :) Well, election day is on Sunday... Let's go out and vote, people, and exercise our democratic right ! I'm off to a multiple-hours stand-in-line here at the Romanian Embassy, still I'm not discouraged... it�s for a good cause. (did you know that in some countries the vote is compulsory ? really ! you can find a list here: http://www.australianpolitics.com/voting/systems/compulsory.shtml )