Censorship at Moldova 1 in Press Club's attention

'The only period during which the news items at the national TV channel were correct was the start of the 1990s and it was due to people who resisted the pressure exerted by the power,” Viorica Cucereanu, former journalist of Teleradio-Moldova, said at the Press Club's meeting in Chisinau on September 24, Info-Prim Neo reports. “What's happening there today is beyond imagination. There is humiliation and fear there. The claims of the journalists who protested in 2002 and 2004 against censorship continue to be valid today, after the adoption of the new Broadcasting Code. I think the society must monitor attentively what's happening in television. Weak persons, who cannot put up resistance, should not work there,” Cucereanu said. The meeting participants - journalists, members of the Supervisory Board of Teleradio-Moldova and of the Broadcasting Coordination Council and representatives of the Electronic Press Association APEL, agreed that the public radio station and the TV channel Moldova 1 do not fulfill their obligations, but violate the rules laid down in their statutes. They consider that the information broadcast by Teleradio-Moldova has been strictly censured so that the former ruling party was presented in a favorable light. They blame the company's president Valentin Todercan for this. Speaking about Todercan's refusal to broadcast live the Parliament's sittings, describing this request as interference in the company's editorial policy, the president of APEL Alexandru Dorogan said that Todercan's position is superficial and baseless. According to him, the parliamentary sittings in a year with two electoral campaigns are of major interest to the public. “The wish to gain editorial independence will be observed only when the given institution fulfills its duty to inform the people correctly, in public, not personal interests,” Dorogan said.