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News And Media - Letters from our correspondents
Dear Sir/Madam: Please, find below the letter addressed to Mr. David Westin, ABC News President, by HE Sorin Ducaru, Appointed Ambassador of Romania to the US, on the ABC`s recent broadcast Children for Sale in the 20/20 program of Friday, June 8, 2001. Sincerely, Mugurel Stanescu Embassy of Romania Washington DC
"June 12, 2001 Dear Mr. President: I regret to have to convey to you that I am very disappointed by ABC s recent broadcast Children for Sale in the 20/20 program of Friday, June 8, 2001. In their approach to a real difficult and sensitive problem, your reporters opted only for those facts serving a blatant effort to gain a reputation for exposé reporting. No real impact in helping the needy. No pursuit in finding the guilty. No fair intent to praise and encourage all those who try to make a difference. There was a total omission of data and credible evaluations reflecting the progress in the past ten years. Would it be assumed that Romanian Government evaluations should not be credited with impartiality, those of the international partners involved in children programs in Romania, such as the UNICEF, the European Union or the American Government, through USAID should be treated as reliable, shouldn't they? And they were available to ABC reporters. But they chose not to refer to them. Instead, they preferred a mounting of video sequences that blurred the line between images taken ten years ago, and present images, generating an unclear picture of evils and angels and inducing a stigma on Romania, which is false and unfair, very much like the snapshots of the homeless on New York s 5th Avenue would be a false label of America. This is what ABC s 20/20 Children for sale might have induced to the public, regretfully with enviable professionalism. That professionalism should have been used for a better cause, sir. Thank you for the final comment in the broadcast that invites Americans to follow legal procedures in adoption. You know as well as we do that, for corruption it s not necessary to have just corruptible people, you also need to have those who provide the temptation. Temptation worked for ABC s reporters, in their attempt to deal with the weakest, poorest families encountered. We wish your reporters had advanced up to a point where they had indeed uncovered a corruption case. That would have been a real help in punishing the guilty and helping the needy. Mr. President, I am sorry if my tone is rather straightforward than diplomatic. Indeed I care personally about the subject. We still have difficult problems to address on the issue of abandoned children in Romania, some of them inherited from the past, some due to more recent mistakes. We came a long way in addressing and alleviating a great deal of these problems with the support of some governmental and non-governmental partners, including media. There is still much to be done. There is still the need for a great deal of help. There is also a great need for decency on everyone s part in addressing this issue. If your intention is to use the resources and professional credentials of your organization in order to do some help, we are all yours. We might still have a story. A comprehensive one. Sincerely, Sorin DUCARU Appointed Ambassador of Romania to US"
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