I'm Florin, I'm 23 years old and I'm an investigative journalist for Journal of Bucharest. I could have become a priest.
I was studying at the Theological Seminary in Alba Iulia and when I saw the abuse made by the director, I couldn't keep quiet. That's how I became the "enemy of the church" and since then I have never turned a blind eye to abuse.
It's not easy to be always connected to what's not going well: in the city, at corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen or dysfunctional institutions. Some people think that we journalists are some robots. Sometimes we are that too, but it's more accurate to say that we are robots who are exposed both mentally and emotionally.
During an investigation sometimes I feel afraid, sometimes I feel disoriented, and some other times I feel helpless. This helplessness I want to tell you about and I'll start in one of the richest cities in the country. Otopeni. Administered since 1996 by the same man, Silviu Gheorghe, a mayor who describes himself as a Christian, a patriot, a rocker and a mountain lover.
This year I worked for four years…ahh…4 months, of course to understand how some of the social apartments in Otopeni end up at people from his close circle: city hall employees, local councilors, directors of institutions, people that have jobs of directors, but also party members, and even priests.
On paper, these are apartments that should go to those who have difficulties finding a house to maintain. That's why the rents are under 160 lei a month, for surfaces that more often than not are over 100 square meters. However, they belong to people with jewelry and watches worth tens of thousands of euros, with apartments in Milan and houses with a story, also in Otopeni.
I wanted answers, so I hit the road with my editor Cătălin Doscaș and the video journalist Andrei Ilieș from Recorder.
Across the road from the main entrance gate to the country's biggest airport we found Maria, Nicolae and their four children. Ignored by the authorities, they are forced to live "abusively", they say, in a makeshift house with cracked and perforated walls.
Doors are about to fall down and instead of windows they have nailed boards. A rusty chain-link fence and a rickety roof separate them from the constant din of the DN1 and the roar of airplanes. The family's only guardian is a dog that has stumbled across their home. There is electricity, but the wiring is makeshift. They've never had running water, but they carry cans from a nearby hotel. This is how they manage to cook and wash their children before going to school.
They told me that over the years, they have been visited even by people from the Town Hall. But they wouldn't get good news: they were told there was no social housing available. And even if there were, they didn’t have an Otopeni ID card and are not suitable. Basically, they didn't fulfill a series of bureaucratic conditions, which the authorities were not going to help them with.
After talking to Maria and Nicolae, we went straight to the Town Hall, where the public servants who were supposed to explain us how such an injustice could happen, locked themselves in their offices. The secretary, also a social housing beneficiary, told us to our faces that she refuses to answer.
Then, we stood on street corners to try to get into the block where the sub-prefect of Ilfov, one of the most important liberals in the county, had a social apartment.
Eventually, we went in. On the doorknob there was dust, on the floor there were papers thrown…bill papers theown, and at the Maintenancehe had a debt of over 2,000 lei. He wasn't even using the apartment. But he still considered himself entitled to have it.
It's not, It's not easy at all to document injustices this big. It's not nice to be hurt and to be annoyed to the point where you feel like filing yourself a complaint at the DNA, even though you know that's not your role as a journalist.
On the same day that I spoke to Mărioara and Nicolae I went and saw the opulence in Otopeni City Hall. It was a discrepancy that I still think about. Or rather, a lesson about how an institution that is supposed to help the most vulnerable in the community chooses not only to ignore them, but in parallel to provide social housing to those already living in luxury.
For me it was also my first video investigation. It's also, so far, the investigation I've worked the most on. I started with a trip to the Ilfov Court, alongside Cătălin, where I scanned over 1,000 pages of files with my phone.
That's how we ended up having in our hands every social rent contract in Otopeni, as well as the laws and rulings under which they were granted. I read each and every contract, then made a database in Excel, one of my best friends. With so many non-transparent institutions
investigative journalists from Romania are forced to become puzzle-solving masters.
I knew the story was a good and important one, but there were many days when I fell asleep thinking about one of the fears that kept nagging me: what if I can't wrap up the story well enough for you?
I had to learn how to write a script, learn how to read it, and then help, with what I knew to put the clip together. The fear went away when I realized I wasn't alone. My colleagues from Recorder, Cristian Delcea and Andrei Ilieș, put it together and edited, Emilian Mocanu did the animations and the visual identity, and me and my editor Cătălin did bits of everything.
When it came out, it boomed. Today it's reached over 25…220…255,000 views despite that at the time of its publication the channel that was published on had only 23 subscribers. Opposition parties used our work in the local election campaign to attack politicians they were competing with. We had to tell them to stop using footage from the investigation for their political attacks. We didn't publish it around the elections because we planned to, but because that's when it was ready. We originally thought I would be done by March, but we were naive.
You're probably wondering if our investigation could also be seen in the votes from the people in Otopeni.
What I can tell you is that Mayor Silviu Gheorghe usually had won with 70-80%. Now he scored only 53 percent, and for the first time since 1996 the PNL lost its majority in the City Council. Whether we contributed to that, we don't know. But we are certain that more people from Otopeni thought twice before putting their stamp.
Of course I too want change when an injustice is put in the spotlight. But my job as a journalist often ends in the moment I hit publish and the story becomes public and then the care and responsibility automatically become the job of the authorities and civil society.
Yes, it's up to me to look into what has changed and how, but much else I can't do and I have a hard time coping with that. The desire to make the world a better place, especially at a local level, motivates me. Then I realize there are many more mayors I should write about.
At Journal of Bucharest I've pretty much ticked off all the mayors in Bucharest and Ilfov. We all work hard and try to be fair to the public. We write about politicians from all parties, but our audience mostly reads articles about Florentin Pandele or Robert Negoiță.
And yes, Pandele also means traffic for us. People want to know things, but as long as it doesn't shake their beliefs. If I write about mistakes that the politician or political figures you like in makes, or show that your favorite bar doesn't have an authorization, you don't like me as a journalist anymore.
That's not always easy to take, either.
When I think about the next four years, I worry about one thing. There's too few of us and we won't be able to write as much as they're going to steal.
I'll confess something else. After the investigation in Otopeni I brokedown more tired and more mentally touched than ever, but the public still kept me afloat. I received hundreds of appreciative messages in just a few days from people hearing about Journal of Bucharest for the first time. I’ve read and responded to almost all the comments on YouTube and there were over 1,000.
I think it's important for the public to understand that it's vital that they write to us when we get something wrong, give us tips on what injustices they see in the world, but also tell us "good job" when it's the case. And if you want to stop being so lonely, support us. That way we can afford extra colleagues with whom to investigate the city and the mayors and find the issues that, perhaps, will also find solutions.
