The Association of Independent Press (API) rejects the accusations insinuating that its monitoring reports had been produced by order in order to justify the editorial behavior of politically controlled mass media institutions. The Association issued a statement saying these are groundless accusations made by persons serving certain political organizations or interest groups with a view to discrediting the API and other media nongovernmental organizations, IPN reports.

The statement says that during the campaign against informational manipulation, the API has been monitoring 12 mass media institutions (newspapers and web portals) in order to identify and illustrate manipulative cases during the coverage of major subjects of public interest. The two reports published so far have included examples when the information delivered to the public was filtered out or distorted, and concrete data from the reports prove that such techniques are, unfortunately, employed by numerous television channels, although each of
them has a different owner.

The monitoring of the mass media during the election campaign for the 2014 parliamentary elections is jointly conducted by three media nongovernmental organizations: the API, the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC) and the Association of Electronic Press (APEL), based on a specific methodology and certain quantitative and qualitative indicators, gauged at 35 mass media institutions (TV channels, radio stations, newspapers and web portals).

The monitoring report No. 1 (for the period between October 1 and 17, 2014) does not state that the television channels Prime, Publika TV, Canal 2 and Canal 3 would cover the election campaign in an equidistant and balanced manner, as some ill-intentioned persons have insinuated, by extracting data from the context and assigning false conclusions invented by them to the authors of the report, in order to justify their accusations and manipulate public opinion.

The API reiterates its apolitical character as well as the impartial and honest nature of all its
activities, including the monitoring reports, which aim only to enhance the quality of Moldovan journalism in accordance with the European standards and the best interests of the public.