Manipulation de la presse sous le gouvernement Goga et la dictature royale (1937-1940) : suspensions de publications non agréées et créations de journaux officieux
State-Organised Press Manipulation under the Goga Cabinet and the “Royal Dictatorship” (1937-1940): Suppression of Unreliable Periodicals and Creation of Semi-Official Newspapers

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses two particular and complementary forms of state-organised press manipulation under the anti-Semitic and nationalist Goga cabinet and “royal dictatorship”. It examines, first, the suppression of papers that did not follow the official political line. Second, it deals with the creation of new semi-official newspapers. It focuses, in particular, on the press of the ethnic minorities, showing that not all minority communities were targeted to the same extent. On the one hand, the Germans, Hungarians, Ukrainians, as well as the Romanian- and German-speaking Jews continued to publish their own newspapers, although with some restrictions. On the other hand, the Yiddish-speaking Jews and the Russians in Bessarabia and Bukovina had their papers completely suppressed. It therefore appears that official anti-Semitism and nationalism had an impact on the press of the ethnic minorities only in connection to the apprehension of the Bucharest authorities of losing control over Bessarabia and Bukovina. It was probably because of these fears that the royal dictatorship deprived the Bessarabian border counties of Hotin, Tighina, and Cetatea-Albă even of their Romanian language newspapers, thus undermining its own influence on these territories. Perhaps for the same reasons, the royal dictatorship underfinanced the Ukrainian-language pro-government paper “Nova Rada”. However, the policies pursued by the regime of the royal dictator-ship were generally inconsistent. This probably also explains why it did not make its official newspaper, “România”, more efficient, whereas the latter still had to compete with the newspapers the royal dictatorship did not suppress.

• Details
• Contents