Experts say several media institutions have become more biased on the eve of elections

A number of mass media institutions have showed an increase in the percentage of biased news favouring the ruling party in the period from May 17 to May 27. These are the findings of the fourth monitoring report on the coverage of the election campaign, conducted by the Independent Press association (API) and the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC). The report, made public on May 31 at a news conference, placed into this category the public stations TV Moldova 1 and Radio Moldova, and by the private stations NIT and Antena C. According to expert Nicolae Negru, this is explained by the growing number of electoral actions and statements on behalf of the government, which were covered by the respective stations. The BCC’s warning regarding the biasness and lack of pluralism on Moldova 1 and NIT had a feeble positive impetus, which made possible the broadcasting by TV Moldova 1 of the CEC decision on the use by Marian Lupu of his incumbency to campaign for PCRM candidates. Experts say that, as in the previous periods, these stations did not cover the activity and statements of opposition parties in their newscasts, and their form of organisation of debates did not advance, impeding in fact the exchange of opinions and the polemic. According to the report, N4 asserted itself on the same position of presenting the reality in a way that would not damage the image of the ruling party and its electoral chances. Euro TV took the side of PPCD in the dispute with PCRM regarding the Great National Assembly Square, and covered the electoral actions of PPCD in the campaign to support the Romanian President Traian Basescu. Vocea Basarabiei, PRO TV and TV 7 were the stations that offered access to the opposition entities and presented some news from critical angles. Russkoe Radio showed an attitude of non-involvement in the electoral campaign and slightly inclined towards favouring PCRM indirectly in the last days. API director executive Petru Macovei stated that nor did the print media show any major changes in their coverage of the electoral campaign; the ex-governmental and local public publications continued to cover broadly the electoral actions of the central and local public administration, and – some of them – to attack opposition candidates. As in the previous period, critical articles about the communist government and publicity in favour of the opposition parties prevailed in most private newspapers. Flux favoured PPCD, Moldavskie vedomosti – PPR, Saptamana – AMN, and Jurnal de Chisinau published an article favouring Vladimir Filat, PD candidate. A few private publications – Saptamana, Observatorul de Nord (Soroca), Unghiul (Ungheni) and SP (Balti) reduced the amount of critical materials about the state authorities but increased the space dedicated to electoral publicity. Mihai Godea, the secretary of the Coalition 2007, mentioned that the number of concerns regarding the campaign has increased in the last 10 days. “We have witnessed an aggressive calumny campaign against some electoral competitors and more “black PR” schemes targeting some candidates for mayor” Mihai Godea said. Coalition 2007 expresses the same concerns as previously, registering numerous abuses both on the part of electoral competitors and authorities supposed to ensure the fairness of these elections. The project “Monitoring mass-media in the electoral campaign for the local general elections” is financed by Eurasia Foundation, from the funds of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED) from the USA, and the OSCE Mission to Moldova.