Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
If he had bothered to look for the evidence, JD Vance would have seen Romanian institutions under attack, which need U.S. support, writes journalist Marc Champion in an opinion piece published Monday morning by Bloomberg.
In February, when criticizing Europe for abandoning democracy, JD Vance singled out Romania for its unprecedented decision to annul a presidential vote won by a far-right candidate who came out of nowhere.
The US vice president owes this country an apology, writes Marc Champion, a Bloomberg columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East.
The journalist points out that at the time of Vance’s statement, he agreed with two points he made: that the declassified intelligence documents did not provide solid evidence to justify the annulment of the vote, and that Romanian democracy must be weak if it can be so easily influenced. There is no doubt, says Champion, that many Romanian voters wanted to vote for an outsider – any outsider – to protest a political clique they considered corrupt, and Călin Georgescu was among those who fell into this category.
This is real progress, Toma said, although it is still “like using a teaspoon against a tsunami.” In fact, says Bloomberg, what should be understood from the political convulsions in Romania should be that TikTok is a lawless haven for secret services and special interests that may now be more important than television in deciding elections, not just there, but anywhere. It will take, says Champion, a major regulation of social media platforms at the European Union level, to implement the rules on transparency and financing of electoral campaigns that apply to more traditional media. A complex campaign
To explain the situation in Romania, Bloomberg columnist quotes investigative journalist Victor Ilie, a Snoop collaborator, who identified the involvement of an infrastructure of thousands of influencers that a company called AdNow LLP had built since 2016.
Although registered in the UK, AdNow was a unit of Ad.Ru, a company founded by a former Russian state television personality that ran ad campaigns in the presidential elections for Dmitry Medvedev in 2008 and Vladimir Putin in 2012. The technique was to target influencers willing to share any viral content, often conspiracy theories, as long as it would attract clicks and therefore revenue, Ilie explained to Bloomberg. The same influencers were then asked to spread content in exchange for regular payments. During the pandemic, these consisted mainly of anti-vaccine messages targeting Covid-19 vaccines, and Romanians proved receptive.
Read more on Bloomberg.
DONATE: Support our work
In an ever changing and challenging world, the media is constantly struggling to resist. Romania Journal makes no exception. We’ve been informing you, our readers, for almost 10 years, as extensively as we can, but, as we reject any state funding and private advertising is scarce, we need your help to keep on going.So, if you enjoy our work, you can contribute to endorse the Romania Journal team. Any amount is welcome, no strings attached. Choose to join with one of the following options:
Donate with PayPal
Donate by Bank Wire
Black Zonure SRLUniCredit Bank. Swift: BACXROBU
RON: RO84 BACX 0000 0022 3589 1000
EURO: RO57 BACX 0000 0022 3589 1001
USD: RO30 BACX 0000 0022 3589 1002
Dear Marc Champion, you are out of touch, context and fashion. There are 2 types of candidates in every modern state of our part of the world: The systemic ones and the anti-systemic ones. The first get all the state funding and the TV media coverage. The second get nothing of that or in the best case “peanuts”. So they try to get alternative support. In any case, the voters physically go to ballets to cast THE VOTE and not any one else but in your fantasies, maybe!