BCC applies same punishment on Chisinau televisions

The Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) has applied the same punishment on a number of Chisinau-based TV stations, although most of the BCC members have agreed on the difference in the severity of the violations committed by those broadcasters. The BCC monitored, from 13 February to 10 March, the way in which Moldova 1, NIT, N4, TVC 21, Eu TV, Pro TV and TV 7 covered the electoral race in their newscasts and warned these stations for faults in ensuring social-political pluralism, on March 24, Info-Prim Neo reports. The warning is the mildest punishment from those 5 that may be applied by the BCC. The BCC members have voted to apply the same punishment both on NIT station, which did not want to offer the right to response to an electoral contestant, and on Eu TV, which had met that political party's request, but also on Pro TV, TV7 or TVC21, guilty of smaller breeches. “I am sorry NIT does not know there is a regulation,” said the BCC member, Ludmila Vasilache, meaning the Regulation of the Central Election Commission on covering the race. “I don't know why the NIT reporters consider they must comment the news,” Vasilache added. „Absolutely all the observed broadcasters violate the law, but one must notice that we have more and more pluralist media from a campaign to another,” said another BCC member Corneliu Mihalache. “But pluralism is an ideal hard to achieve,” Mihalache stressed. The Chisinau televisions are monitored in their covering the race also by the civil society: the APEL Electronic Press Association and the Independent Journalism Center. According to the results of those institutions' monitoring sessions, the broadcaster paid from the tax-payers' money, Moldova 1, and also the private ones NIT and N4, have a fancy for the Communist Party (PCRM), Eu TV – for the PPCD, and all those four are hostile with the political opponents of those two parties. With some exceptions, Pro TV, TV7 and TVC21 try to observe the professional and ethical principles in covering the electoral contestants, show the results of the researches carried out by the civil society.