The Senate's Culture and Media Committee issued on Monday a favorable report for the legislative initiative to amend the Law on the Organization and Functioning of the National News Agency AGERPRES, authorizing the institution to establish, manage and finance a press museum.
The report includes several legislative technical amendments. The Legislative Council and the Economic and Social Council also endorsed the proposal.
"The project we discussed today in the committee (...) represents an extremely important initiative. (...) It is a pragmatic approach to examining and documenting the entire body of Romanian print media over time, and (...) an empathetic one too, because it represents a multidisciplinary museum in that the press actually mirrors various aspects related to culture, politics, social life, education. So, it will be a museum that will cover the entire range of social concerns in Romania over time," Liberal Senator and Culture Committee chairman Cristian Niculescu-Tagarlas said.
The legislative proposal initiated by a group of Liberal senators provides that AGERPRES is competent for establishing, managing and financing a museum having as main purpose the preservation, archiving, research and promotion of the national journalistic heritage. The museum's mission will be "to document and showcase the evolution of the Romanian press from the first written publications to the digital age, including newspapers, magazines, technical equipment, archival documents, audio-video recordings, as well as other materials of historical and cultural interest."
Undersecretary of State with the Culture Ministry Madalin Voicu emphasized that the initiative "can only be beneficial" and recommended compliance with all the legal provisions on the establishment and operation of a museum.
AGERPRES managing director Claudia Nicolae confessed that she felt the need for this project ever since she was a field reporter and sought "a more in-depth documentation on certain subjects, going through every library and researching the written press archive."
"The museum would be a national initiative, first of all because it would bring together all the press of the time. From my point of view, this is a valuable initiative, first of all culturally, for research on various fields of arts, secondly it is an educational initiative - it would help young people who now do not have a platform to coagulate information of the time, and thirdly it would also come with media literacy. Why do I say this? Because the general public would be just one click away - or would be able to go see in person what the press looked like 100 years ago or how information was produced decades ago, they could ultimately become aware of the deontological constraints on a journalist who takes responsibility for the information they disseminate and compare it with social media information. I think that such an approach would be very important at this time," said Claudia Nicolae at the meeting of the Senate's Culture and Media Committee.
She mentioned that a press museum exists in Jimbolia. "We could very well collaborate with the colleagues there, because they had the initiative about 15 years ago, when they created that museum. It would be a beginning and a pillar for the new institution," mentioned the AGERPRES managing director, stressing also that the planned journalistic heritage institution would open the doors to a collaboration with libraries, museums, academies.
The legislative proposal amending and complementing Law No. 19/2003 on the organization and functioning of the National News Agency AGERPRES could be debated and voted on during Monday's Senate plenary session, as the first notified legislative forum.
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