By Robert Tinsley When Alina Mungiu-Pippidi became news department chief at Romanian Television, she discovered that her office was equipped with a special telephone line.

Dignitaries including top national officials kept the hot line to Mungiu-Pippidi's office busy with their criticisms of Romanian public television. The TV channel is the only one that can be seen in all parts of the country, Mungiu-Pippidi said.

"They were calling me to say, 'You know, that actress is a friend of mine and maybe you can promote her a bit, or do something about her,'" she said.

After two months, a period that also brought a change in presidential administrations, Mungiu-Pippidi was fed up. She decided to approach the new president, Emil Constantinescu.

"I told him, ... 'Please, disconnect my line, otherwise I'll go crazy or I'll resign,'" she said. "So, finally they disconnected my line, and I'm a lot harder to get than I was before, which doesn't mean that a lot of people are not trying."

Mungiu-Pippidi told of that victory for editorial freedom and her peace of mind recently in Washington as she led a group of about 20 Romanian journalists in pursuit of another victory -- an economic one. The journalists came to the United States to fire up American investors with enthusiasm for Romania.

During a reception at the Romanian Embassy on March 25, Bucharest's ambassador to the United States, Mircea Geoana, praised the delegation members. He assured them that they had risen to the challenge of professional journalism in post-communist Romania and in doing so, commanded the respect of the country's leaders.

The ambassador's remarks and Mungiu-Pippidi's experience underscore the victories Romanian journalists have known in the battle for respect and editorial independence, but the war is not won.

The situation for Romanian Television is especially complex because it depends on the state for a portion of its budget and it is governed by a Parliament-appointed board that is dominated by the ruling party, Mungiu-Pippidi said.

"I mean, we have it (editorial independence) ... but we paid a lot," she said. "We paid with a lot of quarrels with the Parliament. Parliament is supposed to be our owner, but there is only one point on which all MPs agree, and this one point is that actually the public television and public radio are not independent.

"They are sort of subordinated, not only in our administrative line but also in our editorial line, to the Parliament."

Ion Cristoiu, an independent journalist and leading Romanian columnist, identified a lack of money as the greatest challenge for Romanian journalism. By contrast, he said, the world's large media organizations have invested in neighboring Hungary, and journalists there have up-to-date technology at their disposal.

"In Romania, the owners of all the newspapers are usually businesspeople," Cristoiu said, speaking through a translator. "They are less interested in having a newspaper and more likely to have a way of influencing opinion, to use that for business purposes."

The lack of funds and technology limits what reporters can accomplish. As an example, Cristoiu said that the only way a Romanian journalist could report on a presidential trip would be to travel with the delegation.

"How objective can you be and can you keep things in perspective if you are in debt to the that particular delegation for funding?" Cristoiu asked.

The continuing struggle to transform the economy has left Romania essentially without a middle class, and the public, conditioned to years of state propaganda, lacks the skills to distinguish fair, objective journalism from sensationalism, Cristoiu said.

"There is no way of eliminating the sensationalism to create opportunities for the true journalist, the real journalist," he said.

"In order to sell the newspaper to these people who can very ill afford to buy it, you have to make concessions."

Constantin Badea, director general of the national news agency, Rompres, says that a lack of professionalism still plagues the Romanian press, reducing it to "a kind of warmongering instrument."

"The freedom is not freedom with license. Freedom is civilized freedom," Badea said. "Slandering, inventing, lying without any limits, without any scruples, that's no longer freedom. Character assassination is one of the main preoccupations in many of the newspapers."

Badea said that Rompres and other Romanian news agencies had great potential as tools for building a civil society but that they were very underfinanced. Underscoring the purpose of the Romanian journalists' mission to the United States, he linked the fulfilling of the financial needs to better trade relations and ultimately political relations.

"The United States is the decisive power in the world now. It should state clearly its interest in Eastern Europe or its disinterest, one way or the other," he said. "I'm not making any kind of judgment. ... I don't say ... that it is good to extend NATO or not to extend NATO, but it is absolutely obvious that if you don't state: 'We are going to include this or the other country,' no one will go in and invest there, never.

"If you say: 'We are going to include them,' in precise terms, then it's going to be all right. Otherwise it will keep on -- this situation of hesitation and indecisiveness."

Even as delegation members pointed out the needs of Romanian journalists, Mungiu-Pippidi also noted that Romanian Television had benefited greatly from Western aid and the assistance of consultants from such organizations as the British Broadcasting Corp. and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In the meantime, marshaling the resources they have as well as their wits, Romanian journalists seem determined to continue fighting battles large and small. Mungiu-Pippidi recalled the details of how her office hot line controversy was finally resolved. The Romanian Television executive had told the president about her problem on a day when he was to appear on a live television show.

"And during the live show they asked him, 'But Mr. Constantinescu, pressures continue on the media. There's this line there,'" Mungiu-Pippidi recalled. "And the president said, 'I didn't know about this. I just heard today about this. I'll order tomorrow to disconnect the line.'

"And this was indeed very spectacular."