The restricted access to information of public interest and political censorship remain the major problems faced by journalists in the Republic of Moldova. On the Press Freedom Day, representatives of the media said the war in Ukraine came with new challenges in the work of journalists. While the politically controlled media outlets avoid covering this subject and retransmit a large volume of advertisements, the independent press remained with reduced budgets as the advertising clients do not want to be associated with the image of war, IPN reports.
According to a report published by the international organization Reporters without Borders, the Republic of Moldova ranks 40th by the freedom of the media in 2022, up from the 89th position or 49 spots from 2021. Nadine Gogu, executive director of the Independent Journalism Center, said the independent press in the Republic of Moldova was tested hard this year.
“When we say that the press is free, we do not refer only to the fact that the journalists are free to write about what they want. It also comes to the security conditions for journalists, to financial sustainability, to the possibility of editorial staffs working independently without being politically influenced. Another aspect is the access to information. The fact that the journalists have the right to ask for information is not enough. The public functionaries should yet provide this information. Furthermore, since the start of the war the people from the press have turned exhausted, while the budgets decreased dramatically owing to the lack of commercials. The advertising clients started to withdraw from channels that speak about the war,” Nadine Gogu stated in a special edition on the public TV channel.
Director of the paper “Ziarului de Gardă” Alina Radu confirmed that the war in Ukraine revealed an inquiry between the independent press and the politically controlled press. The press affiliated to political parties avoids the war subject, simultaneously benefitting from the largest volume of advertisements on the market.
“What happened to the press of public interest after February 24 was both nice and ugly. It was nice to see the number of visits to websites growing and this shows the people reoriented themselves to credible media outlets. This didn’t happen at the politically controlled institutions. As to institutions that do not cover the war, we wonder why should an institution that does not respect the public interest be given a license, while we, those from the independent press, have to bear such a heavy burden? In our editorial office, we have worked in shifts from 6am until 2am without additional payments as we didn’t have a budget,” stated journalist Alina Radu.
In accordance with the law, during the state of emergency the retransmission in Moldova of news bulletins, analysis and military programs from the states that didn’t ratify the European Convention on Transfrontier Television is banned. Russia is among the states that didn’t ratify this Convention.
