Experts and citizens absent from political news broadcast by regional public broadcaster

The regional public broadcaster Teleradio-Gagauzia between September 7 and October 15 broadcast a sufficient number of political news stories, the number of items with conflictual character being insignificant, shows the second report on the monitoring of the public broadcasters carried out by the Electronic Press Association (APEL), Info-Prim Neo reports. In a news conference on October 26, expert Aneta Gonta said the protagonists of the political news are mainly state functionaries. The experts are absent from the political news stories on the TV channel, while the citizens are absent from the news items broadcast by the radio station. The men are favored compared with the women. Acting President and Liberal leader Mihai Ghimpu appeared in the televised news programs of the regional public broadcaster most often (330 seconds). The second position is shared by the Liberal-Democrat leader Vlad Filat (100 seconds) and Mayor of Comrat Niolai Dudoglo (100 seconds). They are followed by the Governor of Gagauzia with 60 seconds. Among parties, the PCRM tops the appearance frequency rankings. Besides the parliamentary parties, Teleradio-Gagauzia in its political news referred only to three extraparliamentary parties – the Christian-Democratic People's Party, the Humanist Party and the United Moldova Party. “From our viewpoint, this does not mean real and adequate political pluralism,” Aneta Gonta said. As to civil servants, the news stories feature mainly officials of the Presidential Office. They are followed by officials of the local public administration, the Government and Parliament. On Radio Gagauzia, Vlad Filat appears more often than Mihai Ghimpu Vladimir Voronin, Mihail Formuzal and Nicolae Dudoglo come next. The report titled “Monitoring of political pluralism in the news programs of the national public broadcaster Teleradio-Moldova and regional public broadcaster Teleradio-Gagauzia” forms part of a project supported by the Mass Media Project of Soros-Moldova Foundation, within the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections.