The behavior of some of the media outlets in the election campaign was incorrect, considers the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections. In a news conference at IPN, executive director of the Association of Electronic Press Ion Bunduchi said the most regrettable is the fact that a part of the representatives of the mass media mixed up the job of journalist with the position of candidate for a post, promoting thus the interests of particular parties.

“We should decide who we are – journalists or candidates,” stated Ion Bunduchi. “We expected that the media outlets will have a much more correct conduct and that the electoral environment will be much better.”

Amendments were made to the Election Code in 2010, including as regards the covering of the election campaign by broadcasters. Under these changes, the broadcasters must submit a statement on their editorial policy during the election campaign to the Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) and indicate the name of the owner of the media outlet in the statement. But this time again, the Council accepted a number of statements that didn’t include the name of the owner.

Another shortcoming is the fact that some of the media outlets violated the regulations concerning the covering of the election campaign in 2014, but weren’t penalized by the BCC because no consensus could be reached.

The Coalition’s secretary Nicolae Panfil said that compared with the legislative elections of 2010, the media outlets devoted less attention to such aspects as the education and informing of voters. Some of the broadcasters had a biased behavior, mainly Prime TV, Canal 3, Publika TV, Canal 2, and Jurnal TV.

The Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections consists of a number of nongovernmental organizations working in different areas. Its goal is to contribute to holding free, fair, transparent and democratic elections.