The Broadcasting Coordination Council warned publicly two TV channels for violating the Broadcasting Code. Accent TV and Jurnal TV were accused of not respecting the balance and political-social pluralism in the informative programs broadcast on January 10-19, IPN reports.
According to the report presented in the March 19 meeting of the Council, Accent TV allotted most of the airtime to the Communist Party, this party being presented mainly from a positive and neutral angle. Such parties as the Democratic Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Reforming Party were presented mostly in a negative light.
The report says Accent TV broadcast reports in which a number of institutions were presented in a bad light, without offering them the right to reply. The channel’s director Roman Malinovski argued that the representatives of these institutions were unavailable for comment. However, he warned the report authors not to allow such situations to repeat in the future.
In the second case, the Council ascertained that the largest part of the programs broadcast by Jurnal TV were negative in character. “Everything on this channel is negative. Only 38 seconds were positive,” said one of the Council’s members.
Jurnal TV sent a letter to the Broadcasting Coordination Council, accusing the members of censorship and of hampering the freedom of expression.
