Who pays if you display a fake news about the Recorder and judge Raluca Moroșanu in an intersection in Bucharest?
People walking on the street in Bucharest. Illustrative photo. Photo source: Dreamstime.com
Freedom of speech is very important in a democracy. But facts, opinions and fake news are, however, very different things from each other and should be flagged as such. Even more so when the audience doesn't have a remote control handy to defend themselves with.
On Saturday morning, in an intersection in Bucharest, between Valea Cascadelor street and Iuliu Maniu boulevard, on a billboard as large as two floors of a communist block, the following title was written: “Scene directed during the conference of the Bucharest Court of Appeal. The Recorder publication was speaking with judge Raluca Moroșanu and filmed it before interrupting the press conference.”
The article with that title was taken from the Gândul website and had probably been displayed based on the contract between Radu Budeanu's publication and the street advertising company that owned that billboard.
Thought, like other sites, promote their articles on the street, nothing unusual here. I do not have any information about possible irregularities regarding this contract, but this is not what I want to write about now, but about the fact that in a very busy intersection in the capital of Romania, people can read a fake-news without being warned in any way.
Because there is no evidence that the information was true. The article on the Gândul website is included in the “Justice” category and began exactly like this:
“A video clip just published by the Recorder shows that the publication was speaking with the judge Raluca Moroșanu, who took the floor apparently unexpectedly, before the president Liana Arsenie spoke in the press conference at the Bucharest Court of Appeal (CAB)”.
“The moment seems to have been planned,” Gândul writes.
What was the proof of the “deal”? That Recorder journalists filmed Judge Moroșanu before she spoke at the press conference at the Bucharest Court of Appeal.
“If we filmed it, we obviously knew what was coming, right? No. The Recorder had two cameramen in the room at the event. They knew from the newsroom that they had to get 'illustration' from there, meaning various shots to capture the atmosphere. Before 12:00, when the Court management entered, there was a person in the room who attracted everyone's attention because he was wearing a judge's robe. Of course it was filmed. Do you know any cameramen in this world who are sent to film a football match and not film football players?
No one had anticipated what the judge was going to do when the televisions went live”, Alex Nedea, one of the Recorder journalists, explained on Facebook in response to these accusations.
I'm going to try to be devil's advocate and say that if the article was marked as “Opinion” it might not have been considered “fake – news”. Now I force the grade.
After all, a journalist has the right to consider that an event is directed, planned. Or that everything that happens these days is part of a more elaborate plan, behind which someone important is. Soros for example. But they have to say this from the beginning, so that people understand that they are not facing a proven fact.
These days, there are many opinions on Gândul that say that the events after the Recorder documentary, “Captured Justice”, are staged. It is the authors' right to consider this.
There are also television stations that simply say that the street protests these days are part of a “coup d'état”. It is the CNA's job to check whether or not the law is being broken.
But it is not very clear to me what happens with the false titles on the street signs. Who protects the people on the street from fake news?
PS Judge Raluca Moroșanu gave a Recorder interview, which was published on Sunday evening and can be watched here.
