THE OLYMPICS OF MANIPULATION

Ludovic Orban denied the allegation that Adriana Săftoiu asked Traian Băsescu to appoint her husband Claudiu Elvis Săftoiu as head of the SIE (Foreign Intelligence Service) while at the same time accusing Băsescu of "nepotism" for the very same appointment.

There is no doubt in my mind that appointing Elvis is another one of Băsescu"s wheelings and dealings (I"ve said as much some time ago, by calling the triad that includes Băsescu and the two spouses the "mobsters").

It was blindingly obvious, we didn"t need Băsescu"s embarrassing mistake - "her little hubby wanted to be a head of the SIE, so I appointed him in that position ..."

However, this time, I"m more concerned with the logic of Ludovic Orban.

Adriana Săftoiu is now a member of the same party as Ludovic Orban.

Ludovic Orban says he is certain that Adriana Săftoiu, in fact did not ask anything of Băsescu (and Berceanu confirms this).

But Ludovic Orban claims that the appointment of Elvis in the SIE is a clear case of "nepotism".

How can this be?

If Adriana Săftoiu did not ask for this (Elvis was a presidential advisor himself, and he was actually the one who got Adriana introduced to Băsescu), then how can this be "nepotism"?

I have singled out this case, out of the many fallacies published by the TV stations owned by Voiculescu and Vântu, because the gap between logic and the way facts are presented is visible for anyone with half a brain.

Ludovic Orban was spouting his accusations of nepotism, with a smile and a low voice, in an expensive suit.

No one interrupted him.

Moderators Adrian Ursu and Oana Stancu, who were very active for the rest of the time, - talking at the same time as PDL member Valeriu Stoica - would listen quietly to Orban spouting non-sense.

This is the way Antena 3 does things as well - lots of noise, and stupid sarcasm to shut the supporters of Traian Băsescu up, but a maximum tolerance for supporters of Geoană.

I"ve been thinking.

I am sitting in a free newsroom, which has been free since the beginning and has continued to be for the 20 years that "BURSA" has been around.

I wasn"t a journalist before joining "BURSA", and my colleagues are too young - they were babies when the Revolution occurred (and some of them were born afterwards).

It is extremely difficult for me to understand what journalists working for Voiculescu and Vântu must be feeling.

I find it hard to believe that they unanimously support Geoană.

Our journalists are divided in their support of the two candidates.

I asked them because I was curious.

They"ve answered.

No problem.

We don"t have an agenda.

How the hell would you feel, as a journalist, when you need to follow your boss" agenda?

Being a journalist means being a citizen.

Even better, it means knowing what being a citizen is all about.

It makes one a "qualified citizen".

Concerned with truth and justice.

It is now actually well understood that in order to become a journalist, one needs to give up on their constitutional rights - the freedom of conscience and the freedom of expression.

It beggars belief!

And it is a paradox, at the same time!

So, how does it feel when the defining qualities for a journalist are the first ones that need to go and be replaced with the agenda of the newspaper"s owner?

I"ve tried to imagine what it feels like and I"ve come up with three explanations.

One: such "journalists" have never experienced the alternative, just as I haven"t experienced their situation. To them, professionalism is simply who can bend over backwards the most to obey their boss.

To them their initiation in journalism was finding the agenda.

Just as we started out free, that"s how they began by learning their boss" agenda and even if they moved from one newspaper to the next, things were the same everywhere.

Two: These "journalists" feel personally threatened by the attacks on "media moguls".

Each time the media trusts owned by the latter are accused of manipulation, those "journalists" perceive that as a threat to their livelihood.

Three: Perhaps these "journalists" feel lousy about themselves individually, but they feel better knowing that they"re part of a group.

The phenomenon of personal blogs on the Internet is symptomatic.

If I didn"t feel bad about them, then I would mention several journalists whose opinions on their personal blog are contrary to the official opinion of the paper that pays their salary.

It must be awful to not be free to write what you feel in the newspaper.

It must be terrible to sign something you don"t believe in, just so you can get you paycheck.

But these awful feelings are no longer as painful, when you know you"re not the only one who feels that way, and you can"t even imagine that there are editorial offices where the issue of having to write what your owner wants you to (that you have after a time come to terms with - it"s the nature of the job!), does not exist and never did.

That is why, among ourselves, us "professionals", we try to outdo ourselves in distorting, manipulating, creating fallacies.

It"s like a game.

A game of who can twist things around better!

- Hey, have you seen X do that flip-flop?!

Man, he is good!

The more obvious the manipulation is, the more the admiration for its perpetrators increases.

The champions of this editions of the Olympics of manipulation are Patriciu and Vântu (with a helping hand by Voiculescu).

The montage which shows Băsescu hitting a little boy, drew applause from "professional journalists".

Green with envy at such prowess, Cristian Tudor Popescu however succeeded in finding a small "technical error" in the manipulation process.

Here"s what he said on Realitatea TV:

"The people who had that movie broadcasted aren"t exactly the epitomes of honesty and justice in this country, no!, they are the adversaries of Băsescu, those who waited for the right moment to blow the lid on that movie, but in my opinion, they made a mistake in releasing it now.

[...] technically speaking, they should have let at least three days go by, Mr. Patriciu should have discretely removed himself from the public eye,..., and then, have had those images pop up all of a sudden. You don"t do something like that, Patriciu shows up on TV and the next day you get that movie... that"s not the way to do it. Technically, it"s wrong."

I don"t know what the cure would be for the cancer that is infesting our press.

Most likely every little cog of the media industry needs to be reexamined - from the compensation and hiring criteria, to on the job training, to the organization charts, to the job descriptions and to limits on the authority the editors in chiefs have, going through fiscal discipline, to relationships with the printers, shipping and distribution networks, as well as the relationship with advertisers and advertising agencies, all the way to media audience auditing bodies.

If there is something that Băsescu did wrong in his relationship with the press, it"s the fact that he started bellowing about "moguls" five times in a row, without doing anything else - such as trying to encourage a self-cleanup of the press, even though it was within his means to do it.

He just stood idly by while manipulators took hold of the media.

If there is any reason for him to lose the presidential elections, that would be it.

And if he does, he would have no one to blame but himself.