The media outlets in the Republic of Moldova didn’t offer equal access to all the election runners during the campaign prior to the May 20 early mayoral elections, didn’t ensure the pluralism of opinions and didn’t correctly and equidistantly cover the campaign, says the election campaign monitoring report produced by the Independent Journalism Center within the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections that consists of several dozen nongovernmental organizations.

In a news conference at IPN on May 22, Independent Journalism Center executive director Nadine Gogu said biased attitudes in favor of particular electoral contenders were noticed at almost all the ten monitored TV channels during the last week of campaign, May 14-20. Particular channels openly favored some of the election runners.

The public TV channel Moldova 1 was slightly biased in favor of the Party of Socialists’ candidate for mayor of Chisinau Ion Ceban and independent candidate Silvia Radu. Also, Moldova 1 covered the postings on social networking sites of some of the election runners that staged electoral activities, ignoring yet the postings of competitors that didn’t organize events.

The TV channels of the General Media Grup (Prime, Publika, Canal 2), even if they announced they will not cover the election campaign, covered it selectively, producing a lot of positive content in favor of Silvia Radu, simultaneously disfavoring the candidate of the Party “Platform Dignity and Truth” Andrei Nastase. The other election runners appeared sporadically in the news of the given channels.

RTR channel favored slightly the candidate of the Shor Party Reghina Apostolova, before this was excluded from the electoral race. The Party of Socialists’ candidates for mayor of Chisinau and Balti Ion Ceban and Alexander Usatyi were slightly favored by the frequency of appearances.

On Jurnal TV, most of the electoral contestants were presented neutrally, except for Andrei Nastase, who was massively favored, and of Silviei Radu, who was disfavored.

NTV and Accent TV broadly covered the activities of Ion Ceban and Alexander Usatyi, presenting them in a positive context. Other election runners were presented in a negative light, being broadcast fragments of debates where these quarreled between them. The public wasn’t provided with relevant information about their electoral programs.

According to Nadine Gogu, only TV8 and Pro TV had a balanced and correct behavior in the election campaign. However, the two disfavored slightly Silvia Radu during the last week.

The monitoring report covered the period between April 20 and May 19 and was compiled within the project “Media Enabling Democracy, Inclusion and Accountability in Moldova” that is financed by USAID.