The Business Media for the Rural World – an Analysis on the Romanian Audiovisual

Starting from the findings a Romanian research group gathered during the project “Models of mass-media consumption in the Romanian rural world: traditional identities, European identities” of the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies, University of Bucharest, this article identifies some risk factors in the conceptual design of an audiovisual programme for the rural world. These factors are: (1) differences in the definitions of the public - in our case, the Romanian peasant - as they are held by the journalist, the programme editor, the sources and by the public itself; (2) a quasi-general lack of vision about the future of the rural world, based on a lack of information; and (3) deficiency in applying journalistic information gathering techniques and text writing rules. The conclusions are based on media product analysis of business journalism programmes broadcast by the Romanian public broadcasting services for rural audiences and on questionnaire-based and in-depth interviewing with potential members of the public.