Owlspotting

The Bucharest bird flu quarantine was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered this afternoon, when host Mellisa Block interviewed Radu Tudor of Jurnalul National about the situation in the Romanian capital.

Tudor’s performance was similar to that of other journalists NPR calls in countries or regions they don’t have their own correspondents in. Tudor sounded as if he had done only rudimentary reporting (at best), and also displayed slight unease about answering follow-up questions. Again, nothing special given his role in this segment.

But in the end, he succesfully made his a memorable performance.

Tudor starts off by talking about the Bucharest bird flue situation, the measures taken by the government and the specifics of the quaratine (money per killed chicken, disinfecting houses etc). Then, as if struck by a Ministry of Tourism-operated lightning, Tudor, in ONE PARAGRAPH, succesfully promotes bird flu security, European integration, Romanian efficiency, all while inviting visitors to Bucharest and beyond. Delicious:

Melissa Block: Just to be clear here, there have been cases of avian flu detected among birds, but no cases of transmission to humans. Is that right?

Radu Tudor: No no, no cases. Romania will join the European Union on 1 January 2007, and from this point of view we are always very close connected with our EU partners. And we are taking European standard measures. And of course everything is under control in Romania, so there’s no danger for tourists or from people coming from outside Bucharest here.

Give the man a medal and a couple days off. Who said there was anything wrong with having a pro Romania-bias? You can listen to the interview in Real Audio here.