I've found you, ladies and gentlemen! We have analysts who state without any reservation that Romania is a colony! A puppet state! A space dominated by the interests of some international superstructures and controlled by politicians who first wait for decisions from outside the country!
This is how the Mădălin Ionescu Show from Metropola TV begins, on the evening of May 18, television included in the programs of all cable operators in Romania starting from March, 2021, and financed by the citizens of Voluntari, Ilfov county.
And continue with the "headlines of the day":
We risk selling our land to foreigners, slice by slice! Who puts sticks in the wheels of young Romanians who want to do agriculture and farmers in our country? And who wants to offer land on a tray to foreign landowners?
The night before, on the same television station, Oana Lovin, the moderator of the show Ne(-)am otrezi, also talks about the "colony masters":
I think I am the only man who has caught why the great relaxation came! And because the UEFA matches will start and the colonial masters don't want restrictions, with vaccination, with a mask, with PCR tests, they don't want, they want like at home, in their countries like outside, and then somehow they complied!
In fact, this theme, Romania's "colony" of Western countries, with the variant "state led by multinationals", will return in the broadcasts of the two, during the months of May and June, according to a monitoring carried out by PressOne.
And Metropola TV is a television owned by a company whose sole shareholder is the Voluntari Local Council, a city whose mayor is Florentin Pandele, husband of Gabriela Firea, PSD first vice-president and former mayor of Bucharest.
In January, 2021, the National Broadcasting Council approved Metropola TV to transform from regional to national television. Since February, it has been included in the must carry list for 2021.
Fake and horror live on Voluntari city television
It is the evening of May 12. At Metropola TV, the Mădălin Ionescu Show starts, the show that runs from Monday to Thursday, between 9:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
"Good evening, dear friends! What would you say if you learned that messenger RNA vaccines are transmitted exactly like a virus? An internal Pfizer document blows up everything we knew about this technology and gives grudges to the naysayers.
If the information is correct, the spike protein from the vaccines for which the authorities all over the world have ended up discriminating against the population, is transmitted orally, by touch, or even sexually! I know, it's shocking. Did the Big Pharma specialists create a monster in the rush to have an antidote?", begins Mădălin Ionescu.
The day before, on May 11, Valeriu Gheorghiță, the coordinator of the national vaccination campaign against COVID-19, had just announced that, probably, Romania will not reach the threshold of 5 million vaccinated until June 1. That threshold has not been reached even now.
Mădălin Ionescu debates his shocking topics with a few guests who seem to have been chosen on the fly: Adrian Severin, former member of the European Parliament, sentenced to life in prison for corruption and a character whose opinions are often taken over by Sputnik Romania Moldova, a Russian propaganda institution. Also in the studio are Carmen Dorobăț, former manager of the Iași Infectious Diseases Hospital, sentenced to a suspended prison term for bribery, and sociologist Mirel Palada. He was also sentenced to 9 months in prison with a suspended sentence, because he punched former USRPLUS senator Mihai Goțiu during the break of a TV show.
Guests talk about "vaccines being transmitted like a disease" and use a "so-called Pfizer internal document" as their source.
Only that the alleged danger of "vaccines that are transmitted as a disease" had already been disproved, as early as March 30, by the fact-checking unit of the Reuters news agency. In the cited article, the authors note that such an interpretation, like the one Mădălin Ionescu's guests are debating, proves "a lack of understanding of how vaccines with messenger RNA technology work."
What a wonderful evening...
It is the evening of June 10, and Mădălin Ionescu's show is starting again on Metropola TV. An alert and concerned voice introduces the topics of the evening. We speak of them:
SHOCK! Carcinogenic substances in the Moderna vaccine!
The most powerful president in the world, Joe Biden, when he is not tripping has plans for world vaccination!
The same sequence with US President Joe Biden stumbling on the steps of a plane plays for a long time on the screen. Meanwhile, the voice also announces a sexual scandal of proportions, which has as its central character Bill Gates, whose name has been linked to the most famous conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic or vaccination. The voice concludes:
Did the secret services round up Bill Gates before the outbreak of the pandemic?!
In the Voluntari television studio, Monica Tatoiu, former director of the Oriflame company, currently retired, and Mădălin Voicu, musician, PSD member and former deputy in five legislatures, debate these hypotheses with global reverberation.
In the show, the guests repeat some ideas: corporations will replace nations, occult forces are watching the removal of the Chinese company Huawei from the market, during Ceaușescu's time "you didn't steal like that", we ended up selling everything to foreigners.
In addition, there is the discussion with the carcinogenic substances in the Moderna vaccine.
But even this alleged information was refuted by FullFact experts, one of the most serious fact-checking organizations in the world, as early as May 25.
Funny, also on June 10, after a commercial break containing a video spot urging the vaccine, Mădălin Ionescu is mocked in messages by several viewers. Irritated, the moderator gives them this explanation, which I have reproduced as follows:
Among Mădălin Ionescu's guests on Voluntari city television was the Russian Ambassador, Valery Kuzmin. On April 29, Kuzmin receives Ionescu at the headquarters of the Russian Embassy, where, in a long dialogue, he repeats Russia's propaganda themes regarding Ukraine. Kuzmin praises the Russian anti-COVID19 vaccine, Sputnik V, for several minutes after Mădălin Ionescu asks him "what Romania would gain, for example, from a massive import of the Sputnik vaccine".
Oana Lovin, Aurelian and a fake with "parents in Canada whose children are forcibly vaccinated"
It is the night of May 31. At Metropola TV, the show Ne(-)am verezi begins, moderated by Oana Lovin, a young woman known for participating in several anti-mask protests and anti-restrictions imposed by the Government to reduce the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At one of them, last May, Oana Lovin participated with a bouquet of asparagus. She remained famous as "the girl with the asparagus". A year later, he is the host of a show on a national television station, owned by a company in which the Voluntari Local Council is a shareholder.
Oana Lovin invites live Aurelian Popa, the author of a blog with conspiracy theories and one of the leaders of the "anti muzzle" protests, who in turn presents a video. In the footage we see several people participating in a protest in Toronto, and Aurelian explains in an alert tone that we are seeing parents whose children are being forcibly vaccinated in school, while they are protesting and being prevented from reaching their children.
And this story is already being dismantled in the international press. In a way, it brings up the banks with Radio Yerevan: yes, it is true that the people we see in the images are participating in an anti-vaccine protest in Toronto, but they are not the parents of any children who were forcibly vaccinated, as they claim Oana Lovin and the author of the blog.
A few days before, on May 26, Lovin has as a guest Senator Diana Soșoacă. This appears while reading a speech in the Romanian Parliament, in which he claims that Romania is a state run by multinationals. Soșoacă is, in the same period, Mădălin Ionescu's guest, on the same television.
Pressei MagazineA newsletter for curious and intelligent readers.
I'm curiousOn May 25, Oana Lovin has a dialogue with MEP Chris Terheș, a great critic of DNA's activity and the anti-corruption fight. Terheș claims that the population of Romania is forced to use a vaccine that is "not approved".
"No person will feel safe in Europe anymore! Blackmailing the population to inject themselves with a medical product that is not even approved!", Terheș declares, by phone.
Oana Lovin also declares: It's experimental!
In fact, all the vaccines used in the vaccination campaign in Romania are authorized by the European Medicines Agency.
During the documentation of this material, Oana Lovin's show was withdrawn from the Metropola TV schedule.
How does a local community television end up broadcasting nationally
"Investing in this television is not an endeavor in vain. Through the concept we propose, quality INFORMATION, CULTURE and EDUCATION will bring VALUE. Consequently, VALUE will simply lead to WELL-BEING. It is a cycle that we are obliged to implement through Metropola TV".
This is what a fragment of the editorial strategy sounds like, based on which Metropola TV received the vote of the National Broadcasting Council to broadcast with national coverage, in January, 2021.
The strategy states that Voluntari city television undertakes to open regional studios in Constanta, Iasi, Brașov, Cluj, Oradea, Timișoara, Craiova, within 6 months of receiving the license.
According to the grid that accompanied that strategy, Metropola TV's evening program should have run news magazines, art films, short health and religion columns, a show dedicated to minorities (Thursday evening) and a car show.
In reality, every evening, from Monday to Thursday, the main show of the evening is the Mădălin Ionescu Show, followed by Meriți, a show moderated by Mugur Mihăescu, a former member of the band Vacanța Mare, about whom the media reported that he was one from the leaders of the protests against the measures to reduce the COVID-19 pandemic, then a TV pill signed by Ion Cristoiu. Oana Lovin's show used to be in this time slot. None of these shows appear either in the editorial strategy or in the grid with which Metropola TV convinced the CNA advisers that it deserves to become national television.
Only one member of the Council voted against it - Dorina Rusu, former journalist.
I contacted Dorina Rusu and asked her to explain her vote in January.
"I voted against because it does not seem natural to me that the money of a local community should be spent on a national television. There is also an article in the Broadcasting Law, article 47, point d, which says that audiovisual licenses can be offered to local authorities on the condition that they only provide information for that community.
Those from Legal (from CNA, ed.) said that what I said is not valid, because the license is not directly on the City Council, but on a commercial company in which 99% are shareholders of the Council Local. (according to the Trade Register, at this moment, the Voluntari Local Council is 100% the owner of the company, n. ed.)
This is a legal artifice. Even under these conditions, it still didn't seem right to me, even if the people from Juridic said it was legal, because that money still belongs to the local community and it doesn't seem normal to me that it should be used to treat some subjects that they have nothing to do with Volunteers.
No one asked the people. However, maybe they don't want a national television, they have something to watch," Rusu explained to PressOne.
She also said that, at the time of licensing, the company that owns Metropola TV promised that it would be a television different from everything else on the market.
"Romania, the colony of the West", a story of Kremlin propaganda
In an extensive interview published by PressOne in the summer of 2019, Nicolae Țîbrigan, an expert in information analysis at the Laboratory for the Analysis of Information War and Strategic Communication (LARICS), shows that the story of "Romania, the colony of the West" is a propaganda narrative of the Kremlin. And not just any, but a strategic one.
"It was initially launched as a strategic-military one. Its purpose was to create the feeling of oppression of the local population in order to induce the political decision-makers to allocate less money for the defense sector, to create some currents of protest organizations against the installation of the Deveselu shield. But gradually it came to be taken over in other forms at the level of political circles. Unfortunately. Certain political parties, not all", said Țibrigan at the time.
We asked Ileana Racheru, doctor of political science at the University of Bucharest and expert in the ex-Soviet space, to list some of the Kremlin's propaganda themes in 2021, without mentioning details related to this topic.
Here is part of the list sent:
Metropola TV and public money
According to the data registered at the Trade Registry, the SC Publivol Creativ company, which holds the license for Metropola TV, is 100% the property of the City of Voluntari, i.e. the Local Council (CL) of Voluntari . According to the Voluntari City Hall website, the majority in CL Voluntari is owned by PSD. The mayor of the city, Florentin Pandele, is also a PSD member and the husband of Gabriela Firea, PSD first vice-president and former mayor of Bucharest.
In 2019, the debts of the company owned by CL Voluntari amounted to more than 500 thousand lei, to explode, a year later, to 4.73 million lei, also according to the Trade Registry data.
In 2020, Publivol Creativ had no less than 43 employees. Sources close to the company show that in 2021 it already has 136 employees, with salaries varying between 13,504 lei (technical director), 11,967 lei (a TV presenter) and 4,273 lei for an unskilled worker.
As a detail, the Trade Register also shows that SC Publivol Creativ has registered its hashtag #atatsaputut with OSIM.
According to the data obtained by PressOne, on May 10, 2021, the Voluntary Local Council approved a capital increase for SC Publivol Creativ, in the amount of 3,000,090 lei, money from the budget of the Voluntari City Hall. USR PLUS councilors voted against this decision.
Oana Leahu, USR PLUS adviser, told PressOne that during the meeting, the advisers were explained that the amount is needed to buy a new headquarters for Metropola TV.
"The problem is that these expenditures of public money made for television are not transparent. We were told that a headquarters is going to be bought. When? How? We have no way of knowing that," she told PressOne.
In addition, Leahu added that, for example, in 2021, the Voluntari City Hall allocated funds to pave a single street.
I contacted Septimius Pârvu, an expert within EFOR, an NGO that has issued several reports on the spending of public money. In his opinion, a local administration would have no reason to invest public money in a television station.
"If we look at what such a television could do, we would probably think that it would cover the events that happen in that community. But if we consider that it has national coverage, I think the purpose of such television becomes different.
My first impression is that a post has been created that promotes a political interest. That is, it is not a content that is for the benefit of citizens. I think that a television station rather belongs to the free market, it should not belong to a public institution", Pârvu explained to PressOne.
***"Russia's aggressive actions represent a threat to Euro-Atlantic security" is stated in the statement adopted by the North Atlantic Alliance at the end of the summit in Brussels, from mid-June. Along with China's influence, cyber risks and terrorism, these are the main themes of the Alliance. Romania has been a NATO member since 2004, when it acquired the status of an ally.
*** Misreport is a weekly newsletter that dismantles the fake news and disinformation that surrounds us, created by Codruța Simina and Rubrika. If you'd like to receive a weekly digest of viral hoaxes and disinformation narratives, you can subscribe here.