An editor in chief of the PCR's "Scînteia" after the start of Soviet occupation, Constantinescu led the panel of journalists towards Stalinist guidelines, and encouraged a personality cult around Gheorghiu-Dej, whose biography he helped falsify. He was himself praised in the PCR press, and papers circulated the notion that he worked as much as 14 or 16 hours a day as a rule. In February 1945, during street clashes between pro-Communist forces and authorities (leading to the fall of the Nicolae Rădescu cabinet), "Scînteia" published a claim that its editor had been the target of an assassination attempt.