BCC rejects PCRM contestation as groundless

The Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) Friday rejected the contestation filed by the Communist Party (PCRM) as unfounded. The PCRM claimed that the public channel Moldova 1 favored the electoral candidate of the Moldova Noastra Alliance (AMN) in several news programs, Info-Prim Neo reports. The representative of the PCRM did not attend the public meeting of the BCC. Earlier, he said that Moldova 1 infringed the regulations concerning the covering of the election campaign as it offered unequal airtime to election runners. In an informative note, the public broadcaster Teleradio-Moldova confirmed that the bulletins broadcast at Moldova 1 between February 8 and 19 included eight materials about the AMN and three materials about the PCRM. But it said that in that period the AMN carried out a number of activities (presentation of the election platform, news conferences, etc.) that the TV channel covered. Moldova 1 presented the video recordings from that period asked earlier by the BCC. At the previous meeting held on March 4, the BCC sanctioned the channel for not presenting the recordings in due time. After watching the video materials, eight of the nine BCC members voted to reject the PCRM’s contestation, describing it groundless. They said that Moldova 1 did not abuse when covering different events, including the activities carried out by the AMN. Carmelia Albu abstained from voting. According to the head of the Monitoring Department Dinu Ciocan, the BCC has so far received three more contestations, all lodged by the AMN. The Council is to examine them at a public meeting in compliance with the institution’s regulations.