MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF ARRESTED POLITICIANS. INTERPRETING THE LEGAL PROVISIONS, FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Abstract

Former presidential candidate, former Minister of Tourism, a female politi-cian with a presence and an impeccable style, Elena Udrea had a clear, well defined public image prior to her arrest on February 10th 2015. However, her public appearances and her public image shifted dramatically after her arrest. As stated in our previous article , the current research intends to re-flect upon one of the most well-known and ethically and legally challenging for the media case in Romanian politics: Elena Udrea’s arrest. After verifying firstly the ethical dimension, in order to confirm or infirm the main research hypothesis that the monitored Romanian media outlets violated the ethical right to privacy of politicians, as well as their right to dignity and public im-age, we shift our focus on the second hypothesis regarding observance of the legal norms, and verify whether the legal provisions regarding the right to privacy and private life, as well as the right to dignity, honor, reputation and disposing of one’s public image have been respected by the journalists.