Media become more biased with elections approaching

The mass media became more biased towards the end of the election campaign, shows the third monitoring report presented by the Independent Journalism Center on June 2. The Center’s head Nadine Gogu told a news conference that the behavior of the media outlets between May 16 and 29 was different, with some of them seriously deviating from the ethical and deontological norms. According to Nadine Gogu, the private TV channel with national coverage NIT continues to manipulate the public opinion and openly promote the PCRM’s ideology. Most of the news items broadcast by the channel distort the messages of the Communist Party’s electoral opponents and present these opponents in a negative light, without giving them the right to reply. NIT uses caricatures and archive materials that twist the messages and realities of the campaign. The channel Prime TV did not commit serious deviations from the deontological norms, but the frequency with which a number of candidates appear in the news programs and the approach to covering the electoral events shows that the channel is biased towards the Democratic Party, said Nadine Gogu. As to Euro TV, Nadine Gogu said the channel had an impartial behavior and ensured a plurality of opinions, while the channel with national coverage N4 favored slightly the PLDM in its news about the electoral events and image news stories featuring Prime Minister Vlad Filat The channel Jurnal TV does not openly favor the candidates, but the Liberal Party, especially Dorin Chirtoaca, and independent candidate Mihai Godea benefited from preferential treatment by the frequency and context in which they appeared in the news programs, stated Nadine Gogu. Mass media expert Petru Macovei spoke about the print media. He said the newspapers Moldova Suverana and Nezavisimaya Moldova committed serious violations of the deontological norms. They were openly biased towards the PCRM’s candidate and against the other election runners. Both of the papers presented the information based on one source or several sources that expressed the same viewpoint. “The daily Adevarul covered the campaign in a balanced way and did not seriously deviate from the professional and deontological standards,” said Petru Macovei. He also said that the paper Timpul de dimineata favored the PL’s candidate Dorin Chirtoaca and disfavored the PCRM’s candidate Igor Dodon, while the publication Jurnal de Chisinau had a correct and objective attitude, but put the PCRM in a negative light in some of the opinion materials. The report was produced within the Mass Media Monitoring during the Election Campaign Project with support from East Europe Foundation, with the resources provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Foreign Ministry of Denmark. The next report will be presented in two weeks.