Some of the media outlets in Gagauzia favor particular contenders for the post of Governor of the region, says a preliminary election monitoring report produced by the Comrat Youth Center “Piligrim-Demo” in partnership with the Association of Independent Press (API). According to the report, which was presented in a news conference at IPN, some of the media outlets allot more airtime to particular contenders to the detriment of others and promote an imbalanced editorial policy.
The monitoring was performed in the period between January 16 and March 1 and covered the regional public radio station and public TV channel, the newspaper “Vesti Gagauzii”, which is produced by the Executive Committee of Gagauzia, and two news portals – gagauzinfo.md and gaguzmedia.md.
API executive director Petru Macovei said that in general the three media outlets financed with public money met the requirements concerning the covering of the election campaign and observed the Journalist’s Ethics Code. However, these didn’t pay sufficient attention to the voter education policies. In the monitored period there were produced two issues of “Vesti Gagauzii”, which contained only six articles concerning the elections. Three of them were paid interviews. Such an editorial policy is not aimed at broad promotion. The monitored evening news bulletins of the regional public TV channel included only one feature about contenders’ posters, where only six runners of the 11 appeared. The airtime in the programs aired before the elections is not provided equally to the contenders.
As to the portals gagauzinfo.md and gaguzmedia.md, Petru Macovei said these were rather active and published dozens of materials about the elections. In the case of the first portal, the editorial policy is aimed at supporting candidate Irina Vlah, who appears in almost 30 materials of the 70, mostly in a positive context. The number of materials about the other candidates is much lower, while the context is either neural or negative. The second portal needs to balance its editorial policy.
“Piligrim-Demo” executive director Mihail Sirkeli said that,in general, the campaign takes place without major incidents, compared with the previous elections, is visible and includes a large number of election runners. However, there were several cases when the election posters of some of the contenders were vandalized. On the election day, four mobile teams of observers will travel to the region to monitor the opening of polling places, the voting process, the closing of polling places, the vote counting and result totaling processes, while the monitoring results will be included in reports.
The first round of the Governor elections in Gagauzia will take place on March 22. If necessary, the second round will be held on April 5. Simultaneously, elections will be held in the constituencies Congaz and Gaidar to elect the own representatives to the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia.
