16th of October
TEDxBucharest 2009

Mircea Toma

Psychologist, Journalist

Psychologist, Journalist, supporter of NGOs, Mircea is a generator of freedom, authenticity and spontaneity. He founded the Press Monitoring Agency; he fights and strongly believes in the human rights, being an activist in the liberty of free expression and access to information.

Mircea has a very diverse background. He was a psychologist for the Aeronautical Medicine Center for twelve years until 1990 when he started his career as a journalist for Academia Catavencu. Although Mircea is very famous for his involvement in the mass-media and for the articles he has dedicated himself to research, having worked for 9 years as researcher at the Institute of Psychology in the Romanian Academy.

As a chairman of the Media Monitoring Agency, a human rights organization, member of the network Reporters Sans Frontieres, Mircea influenced EU policies towards Romania in the pre-accession period, actively intervening in the legislative process to ensure freedom of expression and access to information. He also generated changes in the undergraduate curriculum to promote education for competence in media. He offered his advice and helped on programs which promoted freedom of expression in Albania, Moldova, Nigeria, former Yugoslavia states, but was also an UN reporter providing freedom of expression interviews in Cuba.

Moreover, Mircea is the co-editor of 3 volumes, co-author of 3 college textbooks, author of 20 scholarly articles and author of over 4,000 newspaper articles.