Media NGOs describe allotment of TVR 1 frequencies to another broadcaster as illegal

Media and human rights nongovernmental organizations that monitor the implementation of the Broadcasting Code consider the putting up for tender by the Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) of the frequencies allotted to the Romanian Television Corporation (RTC) for the channel TVR 1 and, as a result, the results of the tender contest as illegal, a statement signed by ten NGOs says. The BCC decided to offer the given network of frequencies to an economic entity that is not known on the Moldovan mass media market, ignoring the fact that: the decision to broadcast TVR 1 in Moldova is an expression of the public, national interest formulated in official documents at state and interstate level; the broadcast license issued by the BBC to the Romanian Television Corporation in 2006 allows to broadcast TVR 1 in Moldova until 2011; the decision to put the network up for tender was taken at the request of the Ministry of Information Development of Moldova without a legal justification; the owner of the license, RTC, expressed its readiness and took the necessary steps not to suspend the broadcasting of its programs in Moldova; the general public in Moldova, through mass-media, expressed its concerns over a possible halt in the transmission of TVR 1. The decision to sell the network was made at the request of the Moldovan Ministry of Information Development so that the Broadcasting Coordination Council yielded to authorities’ pressure. Besides, the BCC’s credibility was vitiated by the fact that some BCC members were recently intimidated by the Anticorruption Centre, while the decision to withdraw the license from RTC was preceded by reshuffle in the BCC, and this aroused suspicions that there were given political orders. When taking the decision, the BBC did not take into account the special interest of the Moldovan public in TVR 1, which provided a diversity of TV programmes and a model of European television accessible from linguistic viewpoint. The distribution by the BCC of the frequencies legally used by RTC to another economic entity is the first case of such gravity since the juridical framework for regulating the national broadcasting was set up. The BCC did not have the right to announce a contest for selling the given frequencies at a time when the broadcast license owned by RTC was valid, while the Moldovan Ministry of Information Development’s request did not have juridical grounds to determine the cancellation of the license and the announcement of a new contest. The signatory organizations call on the BCC to give the license back to the Romanian Television Corporation and appeal to the Parliament and Government of Moldova to ensure the observance of the international treaties in compliance with the Moldovan Constitution and to guarantee the autonomous and independent running of the public authority regulating the area of broadcasting. The authors also call on the international organizations and diplomatic missions in Moldova, to representatives of the civil society and mass media from Moldova and abroad to take attitude towards the attempts to minimize the values of European democracy in the Moldovan broadcasting. Earlier, the Monitoring Committee of the Council of Europe said in its draft report on Moldova’s commitments and obligations to CoE that the media in Moldova remains one of the sectors, which still needs to go a long way in order to meet European standards. Reforming the legislation is certainly important, but not enough; more than anywhere else, reforms in the media sector are a matter of political culture and attitude. Neither of these are yet present in Moldova to an extent which would allow the media to perform their essential function in a democratic society, that of a public watchdog,