The newscasts broadcast by seven TV channels during a week contained 227 mentions of the candidates or President, with 45% of all the mentions referring to incumbent President Igor Dodon, says a report compiled by “WatchDog.MD” community, which monitored Prime TV, Moldova 1, Jurnal TV, TV8, ProTV, RTR Moldova and Primul în Moldova during September 21-27, IPN reports.

The leader of the Party of Action and Solidarity Maia Sandu and Our Party leader Renato Usatyi come next with 30 mentions each, being much behind Igor Dodon. The president of the Party “Dignity and Truth Platform” Andrei Năstase got 24 mentions, the Liberal Democratic Party’s candidate Tudor Deliu - 19 mentions, the Shor Party’s candidate Violeta Ivanov - 18 mentions, while the Liberal leader Dorin Chirtoacă and the National Unity Party’s candidate Octavian Țîcu were mentioned in only two news items each.

Primul în Moldova, RTR Moldova and Moldova 1 were evidently biased towards a number of candidates. They favored exaggeratedly Igor Dodon, presenting the other electoral contenders in an insignificant number of news items. 90% of all the positive news stories about Igor Dodon were broadcast namely by these three channels.

Primul în Moldova presented Maia Sandu only in a negative light, being the only TV channel that broadcast negative news items about her. 

Jurnal TV, ProTV and TV8 rank second by tendentiousness. They produced a lot of news stories about Igor Dodon and used manipulative techniques. 95% of the negative news items about the incumbent President were broadcast by ProTV, Jurnal TV and TV8. Even if Dodon was presented in a negative light by these TV channels, a large part of their news items were objective and their negative tone was due to the lack of reaction to many critical news items or to actions that were in contradiction with his statements.

Prime TV slightly favored particular candidates and ignored the others. However, the neutral news items on this channel represented 68%, the news being rather balanced in comparison with other TV channels.

The monitored TV channels used such procedures as misinformation by non-informing and presentation of unilateral positions. There were used such manipulation techniques as “suggestion” or “national savior”. Moreover, some of the channels didn’t give the right of reply to candidates featured in critical news items.