Presa ca sursă primară în cercetarea unor teme de istoriemodernă. Cazul ziarului „Românul” și guvernarea conservatoare Lascăr Catargiu (1871–1876)

Researching history and other subjects involves, among other things, studying the press. It is difficult to catalog the press according to the information it contains. Categorizing it among primary sources is not easy either. While an archival document may be a primary, unbiased source, the press is loaded with subjectivity. It is often the very specificity of the press that recommends it for research on particular topics. It is not by chance that a research topic focusing on the government of Lascăr Catargiu (1871–1876) has sufficient references to periodicals of the time. They list and debate almost every topic of the day. From the newspapers we can find out even the tiniest details of a subject and “extract” the opinion/view or positioning of one political group or another in relation to the measures taken by the government. The newspaper “Românul”, the subject of the present study, was chosen precisely for the density of the information it contains, the analysis we find in its pages, and especially for the fact that it was the most popular newspaper of the period, and also represented the opposition of the radical liberals.