Two of three media managers believe transparency is necessary and important and only one in six makes the budget and other important details concerning the functioning of the media outlet public. Each sixth manager of media outlet does not consider that transparency is important, shows a study of the financing of the mass media in Moldova carried out by the Electronic Press Association (APEL) with support from Soros Foundation Moldova, IPN reports.
APEL president Ion Bunduchi said only nine of 209 print media outlets, 20 of 120 audiovisual media outlets and five of 69 online media outlets accepted to take part in the survey.
Of 34 media outlets, 21 said transparently of media financing is necessary and possible, seven said it is necessary, but impossible, three said it is not necessary as it is a commercial secret, two said this is counterproductive, while one said only the public media should be transparent.
As to the publication of the budget, six media outlets make it public, 11 are ready to do this unconditionally, nine are ready to do this conditionally, three consider this is not important, but will publish the budget if everyone does this, one media outlet is not ready to make the budget public, while four media outlets will not make the budget public because this is not important.
Marius Dragomir, director of the Center for Media, Data and Society that forms part of the School of Public Policy at Central European University, said the subscription model or the press financing model by which the readers must register and pay a subscription to benefit from particular services is the most successful one in the case of the independent press in the EU. The instrumentalization of the media (serving of particulate interests), financing from the Government, financing by donors are also popular.
Marius Dragomir noted that data about the economic performance of media outlets exist in a lot of European countries. They are usually available in one place where data are collected from all the companies, not only from media outlets. Even if one can find out the turnover of a media outlet, it is very hard to understand how much money each channel of this company makes.
Jurist Eugeniu Rybka, the new president of the Association of Independent Press (API), said the law should be amended so as to class this information as information of public interest. “Without such an amendment, we will continue to witness the same reticent attitude on the part of media managers and not only,” he stated, noting a bill is needed to clarify which information should be revealed from legal viewpoint and where the limits of such revelations are.
Ziarul de Gardă director Alina Radu noted that financial transparency cannot be ensured if the owners and goals of the media outlets are not known. She knows from her experience that independence also comes from advertising. The advertising market is usually divided by obscure ways and better communication should be ensured between the media outlets that appreciate transparency and the editorial staffs that make the sources of income public should be awarded as they are now attacked.
Press Council secretary Petru Macovei said that if there was greater transparency, we would know that many media outlets are funded from dubious sources, are maintained for other purposes than media business or informing of the people. The legislation should oblige all the media outlets to ensure transparency of property.
Diez portal director Alexandru Lebedev said it is very hard to resist on the media market when the budgets or players of the market are transparent as there is affiliated press that does things free of charge in order to attract a wider audience and is later used for other purposes than journalism. If the media worked on a more visible and transparent market, the new platforms that would emerge would know how things stand and it would be easier for them to survive.
Olga Bordeianu, “Teleradio-Moldova” director general, noted their company is one of the most transparent on the media market of Moldova and all its documents are published on the official website. The Audiovisual Code allows for only one source of financing, from the state budget, but this is insufficient. The financing now totals 44 million lei and the public broadcaster is in a critical point and cannot develop.
