Ion Marandici, moldawischer Journalist und Blogger, zeigte in unserem Interview die beiden Seiten des web2.0 auf. Der Spagat zwischen freier Meinungsäußerung und Zensur, die Rentabilität von Medien und andere Themen waren Schwerpunkte unseres Interviews, welches zur Einsicht aufrufbar ist.
Das Interview ist in den Kommentaren zu diesem Post veröffentlicht. Es entstammt einem Livechat und wurde nicht redaktionell und/oder inhaltlich überarbeitet. (Q: Frage, A: Antwort)
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Q: Herzlich willkommen Herr Marandici.
AntwortenLöschenA: Ich freue mich sie hier zu finden und bin gespannt ihre fragen zu beantworten :) wenn ich kann.
Q: Herr Marandici, eine Frage zu ihrem Blog. Sie sind Journalist, aus welchen Gründen betreiben Sie ihr Blog?
A: Darf ich auf Englisch antworten? Denn auf Deutsch wird es länger dauern.
Q: Sure.
A: Well, when I started writing on my blog it was because I was going to various events and I understood how biased is the traditional media. This was at the beginning of 2007. So i would hear for example major stupid things said by politicians, but i would not find any reports in the traditional media. so i thought i might just complete this gap. The second reason was fun. I thought that it would be interesting to post something and then discuss it with other Internet-users. at that time there were only a few blogs in Romanian language written by Moldovans and there were really no newspapers with discussion forums.
Q: and now, are more blogs comming? Sorry, it gives no question mark...
A: Don't worry that is one of the charactersitics of the new media :) i also often forget about punctuation and other grammar stuff.
Yes, now to have a blog is common even in Moldova. I remember people were very skeptical hearing about blogs. I mean the journalists from the traditional media.
Q: could you change their minds? mainly people from traditional media?
A: You know, I think they changed their minds as they saw that people start having blogs and that blogs can be a could source for them
Q: What were journalists' attitude toward blogs? Did they take them seriou? Did they feel threatened?
A: Exactly, at first they were suspicious and viewed blogs as competitors. But at the very beginning they simply did not take them seriously. The attitude change because more and more people started writing on blogs. And usually those were politicians, experts that wrote analytical pieces and journalists understood that they can use this information. So they began quoting blogs.
Q: Haben Sie eigentlich viele Leser?
A: Not so many now, but according to Google Analytics - 60-70 persons access that page. This does not mean that those people read the blog, many of them are brought there by search engines. It is also true that I was writing more for the rtaditional media. So, I am not making money out of blogging.
Q: Have you had experiences with censorship as a journalist for the traditional media?
A: In some sense yes. Let me give you two examples. The first is related to the national public radio from Moldova. I was invited to speak there about the relations between EU-Moldova and I criticized the Communist government for making no progress towards EU. At that poit the moderator intervened and reinterpreted my statement and took a break, to tell me to be more careful, because his job is at stake.
Q: In 2009, by the elections of the parliament, the opposition said there were restricted access to the tv, is that right, what you know about that, what did they mean, is tv controlled by government?
A: Well, the public TV and Radio are still controlled by the former Communists, even if the elections from July 29th were won by the Opposition parties. At the same time, the paradox is that the advertising was the most expensive on the public TV, because it had national coverage. During the campaign I mean.
Q: ah you mean because of political advertising by the communists
A: Yes, I mean that the one who controlled the public television was setting the price for political advertising.
Q: Are they controlled officially ore inofficial like in italy ore espana?
AntwortenLöschenA: Coming back to your question on the political control. It is not like in Italy, because in Italy there is Berlusconi, who is a private owner of his media empire. In Moldova, it is those in power who control the national public radio and the television. The control is mainly through the state institutions. There is for example an agency, which distributes frequencies and licenses for TV and Radio stations. So, often this agency would refuse to grant permission for broadcasting for a specific Radio station or for the expansion of its coverage. They can blackmail the non-governmental media.
Q: und wie ist es mit dem Internet? werden die anti-regierungsseiten kontrolliert?
A: Das ist eine sehr gute Frage. I will need a little bit more space for this answer. :) From my observations and experience, it seems that the government has constantly to follow the technological innovations. I mean they try to monitor the media. And actually, if you have a tracking system on your website, you could see how some people from the intelligence services were accessing the website at a particular hour. So, they tried to monitor them, at the beginning.
Later, the authorities saw that the influence of the Internet is growing and especially the influence of the opposition websites. The most notable of them are www.unimedia.md and www.jurnaltv.md. So, they tried to control them in the following way.
Q: but how you can make difference between normal people and people from the intelligence service?
A: It is very simple, their IP. It was ending with sis.md and the intelligence service in Moldova is called SIS (www.sis.md ). But let me just answer Yulia's (i. e. the question before, red.) question.
Q: ah ok thanks.
A: So, these websites did not have moderated forums and people started writing very critically about the government. In fact, it was the only place were you could read such things. At times people were very radical, so they would write "Communists must die" or "The dictator must be accused of high treason" or "We need a revolution" or xenophobic messages against certain minorities. So, the authorities demanded the administrators of Unimedia and other forums, the IP adresses from which those messages were sent. as you know if you have the IP address you can very easily identify the person, who wrote that message. So, the authorities used certain legal provisions to request those IPs. Initially, the people administering the online forums refused to provide the IPs. But later under the pressure of the authorities, they provided the authorities with those IPs and the authorities confiscated the computers of the Internet dissidents.
Q: i also have a question about the last election, how was the influence of new media regarding of winning elections by the opposition?
A: That's also a very interesting question. As I mentioned earlier the political advertising was expensive and the cheapest was the online advertising. The most expensive are the TV ads. The power incumbents did not bother about Internet. It was the Opposition, which focused more on online political campaigning. The main reason is of course the overall control of the media space by the Communists' Party. Often people would organize flash-mobs using Facebook. Not to mention, the so-called Twitter revolution that followed the elections. So the use of social networks was widespread: especially facebook and Odnokassniki, which is a Russian social network. Interestingly enough, the Russian social network deleted two anti-Communist groups that numbered around 2000 members. To summarize, the Opposition did not have too many alternatives and was actually forced to go online. For ex. the current premier, Vladimir Filat had a blog www.filat.md He was the first politician to have a blog. On the other hand, the use of Internet in moldova is still limited, so politicians knew that they will not reach many people through the Internet.
AntwortenLöschenQ: Ich verstehe nur nicht, wer diese accounts on Odnoklassniki gelöscht hat? Die moldawischen leute oder die russen?
A: Ok, soweit ich verstanden habe, es waren die Administratoren dieser Plattform die das Group gelescht haben. Sie haben nicht die Accounts geloescht.
Q: und wer sind diese administratoren? :)
A: www.odnoklassniki.ru is one of the most known Russian social platform. I think it is the most accessed Russian website. And like the Russian blog platform livejournal (if I remember correctly) I presume the Russian authorities have their say, there. As mentioned before the authorities in every state try to control the Internet. Recently, for example FBI is constantly monitoring Facebook. Sorry, recntly FBI started an investigation based on a Facebook post. Anyway, I was surprised to find out how many blogs are written in Belarus. More than 40 000 !!!
Q: Also.. wenn man es sich so ueberlegt..gibt es eigentlich auch im internet keine pressefreiheit? man glaubt nur dass man sie hat?
A: Well, it depends what do you mean by freedom … I would say that it is a constant struggle online. But there are certain limits which you cannot cross. I am referring here to propaganda. Because let's face it xenophobia, neonazis, pornography have greatly benefited from the spread of Internet, or various terrorist organizations.
Q: you are referreing to the situation in moldova...
A: Yes, of course. If someone writes on a blog xenophobic statements that is already crossing the limit. And one thing that i discovered when reading the posts on various forums that in the Moldovan society there are many people who understand freedom in a different way. Under the veil of anonimity they write a lot of obscenities or call for violence against certain minorities.
Q: in dem sinne finde ich es gut, wenn es solche beschränkungen gibt...
A: Well, for me there are no doubts that the development of the online-forums, the use of Youtube, Facebook, other Moldovan forums has brought a democratization of the society. People were afraid to say something. Now, if you have a cell phone with a camera, you film an official in an incovenient situation, you post it on youtube and the politician might lose his job. Or the events from April 7 in Moldova. They would not have been possible without Twitter. The same happened in Iran recently, although on a much larger scale. And the authorities realizing the potential of thiese websites blocked the access. The same happens in china, where Youtube is not accessible. In China if you try to find some anti-communist statements using Google, you will not find them, because when Google entered the chinese market it made a deal with the government. So, in this sense I see a constant struggle of the authorities to monitor and control the content to which users have access. Of course, in authoritarian and semi-democratic regimes the authorities have more power.
AntwortenLöschenQ: With the demise of traditional print journalism, how do you see the future of online journalism? who is going to pay for it and how can quality be achieved?
A: Well, it is true that people read more and more the news online. But this does not necessarily meant that traditional newspapers will disappear. If they manage to move online, I think they will manage to resist. On the other hand, the journalism online is much cheaper. With a cell phone you can write the news, make the photo and post it online. Or the video.
Q: But correspondents have to be paid, investigative journalism is expensive...
A: Indeed, investigative journalism is the most expensive and risky. Well, there are several business models. But as I see it, you either will convince your online readers to pay or you will have to rely a lot on advertising. Some American newspapers already charge you if you want to read articles from the archives or even the yesterday edition. I think The Washington post is doing that. well, the tradional media is now incorporating many web 2.0 elements.
Q: But as, i think, murdoch said, for online ads you get pennies instead of dollars. will this be enough?
A: Well if the costs are so high, how do we explain the emergence of online publications from blogs. The best example is huffingtonpost.com. Let me give an example from Moldova. The best romanian-language newspaper is Timpul and because they have the best columnists there people continue to buy the newspaper. At the same time, the www.unimedia.md which is only an online publication is still struggling to attract good columnists and comentators. The users will decide what type of press they want to have. At the same time, older people in Moldova will continue to read the paper. :) The same debate is going on about e-books and books. Will the traditional book disappear?
Q: no! :) Nicht inmeinem leben wenigstens :). Mr. Marandici, I am afraid our time is running out. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. It was certainly very interesting.thank you for your information, it was very interesting
A: I hope so, but much depends on the bahavior patterns of the readers. If they switch to Kindle, then it will be difficult. Vielen Dank fuer die Aufmerksamkeit, denn irgendwie vergass ich die wichtigste Regel: online muss man kurz sein. :)
Q: ich danke Ihnen, dass Sie nicht kurz waren )
A: ich wollte noch ein bisschen ueber die moldausiche Twitter-Revolution erzaehlen, aber naechstes Mal :)
Q: web 2.0 hat eben vor- und nachteile. wir werden dieses interview in das blog stellen und kommentare ermoeglichen. und da koennen sie ja noch in kommentaren oder aehnlichem zur twitterrevolution schreiben, das faend ich sehr interessant.
A: Gerne.