Most of the media outlets in Moldova are owned by particular groups of interests and some of these serve as instruments for manipulating the public opinion. At the same time, Moldova’s legislation does not provide sufficient measures for preventing and counteracting the dominant positions on the media market. Such conclusions are contained in a study of the capturing of the mass media and other public communication means in the Republic of Moldova that was presented by the Association of Independent Press (API).
API executive director Petru Macovei, in a news conference at IPN, said the captured media outlets manipulate and intentionally and systemically distort the reality to justify the actions to appropriate public institutions by groups of interests. “The captured mass media do not fulfill their social duties to objectively inform the society. The legislation in Moldova, represented by the Broadcasting Coordination Council, apparently ensures ownership transparency, but does not provide efficient measures for preventing and countering positions on the media market, offering only general recommendations,” stated Petru Macovei.
The authors of the study ascertained that the TV channels that form part of the GMG group (Prime TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3) during the last three years have served as instruments for distracting attention by irrelevant content from the condemnable actions of the government as well as instruments for media lynching of opponents. In March – April 2017, the TV channels carried out aggressive propaganda for the uninominal voting system proposed by the Democratic Party.
Another two channels show powerful political bias for the Party of Socialists through the promotion of the party’s image and attacks on the opponents. These are NTV and Accent TV. Also, a series of informational portals and blogs are a primary source for spreading manipulating content and media lies, in some cases, which are later disseminated by TV channels and presented as credible information.
Political analyst Igor Botan said that according to the so-called roadmap of the government, the legislation last year was to be amended so that the concentration of media ownership and monopolization of the advertising market were excluded. “The Moldovan authorities reported that the roadmap was 94% carried out. But in a year we are at the same point or even at a worse level, according to this report and to international studies. Things only worsened as regards freedom of the media,” stated the expert.
The representative of the Legal Resources Center Nadejda Hriptievski recommended the people to inform themselves from safe media sources so as to avoid being manipulated. Transparency International Moldova executive director Lilia Carasciuc drew a parallel between corruption in different branches of the government and the capturing of the mass media. “If we speak about corruption in state institutions, this existed for many years and continues to exist – when someone takes bribe, resorts to influence peddling, etc. But when this corruption is concentrated in the hands of a very small group of people, these persons capture the state institution. The same is true about media outlets. They are at first over-concentrated and then become captured,” stated Lilia Carasciuc.
The authors of the study recommend adopting appropriate regulations for naming the members of the Broadcasting Coordination Council, supplementing the Competition Law so that this ensures the counteracting of media concentration and guarantees loyal competition on the adverting market, and working out a plan of action for protecting the media space from propaganda, disinformation and manipulation.
The conclusions were presented to representatives of the European Parliament with the request to introduce conditionality for the support provided to Moldova by the European partners for implementing different reforms in the mass media.
The study was commissioned by Transparency International Moldova within the project “Strengthening of the democratic state and the rule of law: contribution of civil society” that is financially supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bucharest through the Responsibility Fund Program.
