CNN and Newsweek Caught Up in Pay-for-Play Political Scandal

[Celerity]

Millions of dollars in alleged hush money is being paid to media outlets by political parties who reportedly hope for favorable coverage.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-and-newsweek-caught-up-in-pay-for-play-political-scandal



Romania’s media market is engulfed in a pay-for-play political scandal which includes newsrooms using the brand names of CNN and Newsweek. CNN’s Romanian affiliate, Antena 3 CNN, has a TV broadcasting license which precludes it from taking money from political parties outside of designated election campaign periods. Yet that is reportedly exactly what the biggest names in Romanian news media have been doing through their websites, which are unregulated.

Investigative reports based on insider evidence have exposed money being transferred to media companies via intermediaries by the very political parties they are supposed to hold to account. “It’s a big problem for the credibility of the media industry, because it has become difficult to distinguish what is bought up and what is organic journalism,” Septimius Pârvu, of the Expert Forum think tank, which has launched a lawsuit over Romanian political spending, told The Daily Beast. “I get a sense that the parties have come to impose their own agenda on the media and the money they pay means negative news is omitted. It’s a bad influence on the media market.”

Two weeks ago, the elections regulator, which governs how much political parties can spend inside and outside of election periods, proposed a cap on party funds going to news organizations and more transparency around the recipients of the cash. The two main political parties in Romania, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL), which have joined forces in government, have ramped up spending on “press and propaganda” to the tune of around $40 million in 2022, twice as much as they spent in 2021, according to an analysis from the local edition of the U.S. government-backed Radio Free Europe (RFE).

Independent investigative journalists at Recorder.ro meanwhile published confidential contracts between political parties and intermediary firms which distributed millions of dollars of state subsidies to the news media. The details of how much each news organization received, including Antena 3 CNN and Newsweek, had been kept secret until Recorder.ro first obtained leaked contracts between the parties and their suppliers of media coverage in September. RFE also obtained data from party insiders.

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