During the first week of the election campaign, most of the monitored TV channels didn’t respect the regulations concerning the covering of the election campaign and deviated from the electoral and broadcasting provisions. The second mass media monitoring report compiled by the Association of Independent Press (API) and the Center for Independent Journalism (CJI) says the TV channels, periodicals and online portals favored particular candidates for President.

In a news conference at IPN, CJI executive director Nadine Gogu said the broadcast news items were often selected depending on the editorial policy that favors particular candidates and disfavors others. Candidates Marian Lupu and Igor Dodon appeared on the 12 TV channels most often, while Andrei Nastase, Maia Sandu and Dumitru Chubashenko were often presented in a negative light.

According to Nadine Gogu, some of the TV channels covered the election campaign tendentiously and didn’t offer equal airtime to the competitors. There were also cases when the TV channels worked rather as propaganda instruments. There was also witnessed an imbalance of sources, with more men than women being quoted as sources and acting as protagonists.

The private TV channels with national coverage Prime TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and Publika TV promoted massively Marian Lupu by the frequency and duration of the appearances and by direct quotations. In contrast, Andrei Nastase and Dumitru Chubashenko were often disfavored.

Jurnal TV favored massively Andrei Nastase, while Marian Lupu was in most of the cases disfavored. NTV Moldova and Accent TV favored mainly Igor Dodon, both by the airtime allocated for his direct interventions and the direct interventions of members of the Party of Socialists and by the positive context of the direct and indirect electoral materials.

The public TV channel Moldova 1, while the private TV channels Realitatea TV, Pro TV Chisinau and TV 7 had a relatively balanced behavior. The relevant news on N4 were neutral.

As to the online portals, API executive director Petru Macovei said the tendency to cover the election campaign by favoring or disfavoring particular election runners persists. “This not always happens because of the defective editorial policies or policies aimed at favoring contenders, but because there are no mechanisms for balancing news in the editorial staffs,” he stated.

Of the 12 monitored portals, four portals relatively respected the principle of impartiality in covering the election campaign, while the other eight openly favored or disfavored particular election runners. The same problem was identified at the four monitored newspapers.

The report will be sent to the Central Election Commission and the Broadcasting Coordination Council for examination. The API and CJI calls on the Broadcasting Coordination Council to meet more often and penalize the broadcasters that violate the regulations concerning the covering of the election campaign, which is mandatory for all the TV and radio stations.