In the pre-electoral and electoral period, a part of the broadcasters were openly biased politically and favored particular election runners, disadvantaging others. There were also broadcasters that behaved impartially, offering access to election contestants running in single-member constituencies and in the national constituency. The news portals also had diverse behavior. There was a crucial mass of portals that didn’t show political bias and also a series of ‘party portals’, shows the final monitoring report that covers the period between January 9 and February 24, 2019. The monitoring embraced 28 media outlets and was carried out as part of the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections by the Association of Independent Press and the Independent Journalism Center.
According to Independent Journalism Center director Nadine Gogu, after monitoring 12 media outlets, the media experts ascertained that most of these disadvantaged by the distributed journalistic materials. Prime TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3, NTV Moldova, Accent TV and Televiziunea Centrală (Central Television) behaved less equidistantly. Nadine Gogu recommends the TV channels to bear in mind that there are media rights and the fundamental rights of consumers of information and also the rights of parties in the election campaign.
The subjects raised by most of the media outlets referred mainly to politics, the activity of the Central Election Commission and social problems. Besides political players and electoral competitors, the monitored TV channels used different sources in the news items, the citizens ranking first, followed, at a great distance, by representatives of the CEC and civil society, etc. The PDM, ACUM, the PSRM, the Shor Party and the PL had the greatest visibility in terms of frequency and length of appearances in images and reports.
Referring to the online portals, Association of Independent Press director Petru Macovei said there were media outlets that promoted the public interest and multilaterally informed the people with the right to vote about the election runners. Nevertheless, there were vicious practices when the media outlets behaved like rostrums of parties and thought not about the informing of voters, but about the promotion of candidates or the discrediting of the opponents of these. moldova.org and agora.md had an almost impeccable behavior in the election campaign. diez.md behaved acceptably, while unimedia.md had a partially acceptable behavior. timpul.md and aif.md behaved like party portals.
