Moldova’s legislation in the area of mass media must be improved. Harsher penalties are needed for the broadcasters that do not respect the pluralism of opinion. The independence of the media from politics should be ensured and the legislation should clearly define the notion of propaganda. Such proposals were formulated in the debate entitled “Public policies in the mass media sector of the Republic of Moldova” that was held within the Mass Media Forum organized by the Press Council, IPN reports.
Press Council head Ludmila Andronic said that since 2009 civil society has put forward different documents, but all in vain. Therefore, the event’s organizers decided to invite the persons that headed the relevant parliamentary commission in the period and to ask what happened to these documents. “Maybe we are not right or were not understood. What should we do further? What is the fate of many documents worked out jointly by media NGOs? What does prevent us from adopting a regulatory framework?” asked Ludmila Andronic.
Liberal-Democratic MP Vladimir Hotineanu, who heads the current parliamentary commission on the mass media, said there was no coherent policy on the mass media. In science, they update the records every ten years. The same should be done in the mass media sector. “The media is the most important instrument of informing, but also of manipulating the population. The word heals, but also kills. We must make effort for the media not to be concentrated and politically controlled,” he stated.
Liberal-Democratic lawmaker Chiril Lucinschi, who headed earlier this commission, said the internal propaganda is a big problem. Regretfully, the institutions that are obliged to monitor propaganda and to impose punishments do not cope. “We focused too much on the external propaganda, but the internal one is as dangerous as we poison society. There must be a filter that would counteract exaggerated, not to say perverse, propaganda,” he said.
Minister of Education Corina Fusu, former member of the commission, said the liberalization of the media was the first good thing done in the mass media sector after 2010. “We wanted to depoliticize the public company “Teleradio-Moldova”. This means replacing the members of the Supervisory Board. But we didn’t manage to depoliticize the Broadcasting Coordination Council and the Supervisory Board. It’s a pity that the new Broadcasting Code hasn’t been yet adopted. The quality of journalism is poor because of the political influence. They no longer speak about a deontological code that everyone should have inside. The notion of self-regulation is also good. I also think that the journalistic guild should be consolidated,” she stated. Corina Fusu informed that the Education Ministry aims to include several media education lessons in the Civic Education course so as to teach the students to cope with the multitude of information they hear and to develop a critical attitude to what they see and hear.
Broadcasting Coordination Council head Dinu Ciocan said the legislation is permissive and the Council can take a regulatory decision only in accordance with the Broadcasting Code. “If the Code allows rebroadcasting a channel, we cannot adopt a decision to ban its retransmission. We repeatedly warned that it is a problem and it should be dealt with and I think it is the legislative body that should intervene. I cannot call penalties the current fines of at most 5,400 lei. Maybe this is a penalty for a local broadcaster, but this is not serious punishment for a broadcaster with national coverage. The withdrawal of the broadcast license can be interpreted as censorship,” he stated.
The Mass Media Forum was organized in partnership with the Association of Independent Press, the Independent Journalism Center, the Electronic Press Association and the Young Journalist’s Center. The event was financed by the Media Program of Soros Foundation Moldova and co-financed by the Council of Europe and East Europe Foundation.
