Some numbers were mentioned:
- Advertising dropped with 35% in TV, 53% in print media and 40% in radio
- 1500 journalists were laid off (I heard that in the UK the number reached this year 3000 people)
- Salaries decries by 50% in some editorial offices
- Around 20 law suits were started, journalists against media groups
Some journalists present at the conference talked about how the Government can help in this situation, other, more pessimistic or if I may say, more realistic, said that media most not search for help from the Government, because the Government at this point has no interest to help.
The discussion turned also to the Internet, as a solution for media, and an intervention of Ciprian Stoianovici (head of news department at Radio 21 and member of The Association of Romanian Journalists) I found very intriguing. He said that the Internet will never reach the informational level as the print media reached last year, not event in 50 years. The motives are technology problems and penetration of the Internet – few use Internet in comparison with media.
Another subject Ciprian talked about was in relation with the “morgue of the Romanian media” (interesting description). Everybody expected from the crisis to divide good media from bad media (the publications with unsound involvement) – after the crisis good media would have survived. Unfortunately things look a little bit different = good media is slowly dying. He said that spring will come and find half of the media existing now. If we look at what recently happened in media, I am more than willing to believe him.
All these effects of the crisis on media have direct impact on PR. And when I say direct impact, I am thinking about the day to day communications activities but also about “media campaigns” that have as main objectives blackmail – as a tool for survival. The freedom of expression and the freedom for information have nowadays new meanings.
We are facing sad times here. Journalist are put in the impossibility to practice objective journalism (either they are forced to act in the economical advantage of the media owner or they are forced to search for other jobs), PR people must find alternative communication channels and tools to fight off hungry media and the population has less and less access to real information.
