Compared with the Eastern Partnership countries, the media freedom situation in Moldova is better, especially because of the tragic events happening in Ukraine and the serious violations in the media sector of Azerbaijan. But, given that Moldova has an Association Agreement with the European Union, the mass media must tend to reach the EU media freedom standards, considers the director of the newspaper “Ziarul de Garda” Alina Radu.
In a public debate at IPN, the journalists said the EU states also admit that the freedom of the media is a challenge for them, while for Moldova it is a problem. The access to public information is another challenge. “Given that the day of May 9 is approaching, during several days I have contacted tens of public institutions to find out how many veterans are there in Moldova, but I didn’t manage to obtain such a figure, not speaking about data about money, companies that involve members of Parliament. The investigation journalists work on a mined field,” stated Alina Radu.
According to her, we cannot speak about the freedom of the media in Moldova at a time when the access to information of public interest is restricted. At the same time, the adverting in the mass media is concentrated in the hands of the political class. Given that the media depends on the political class, we cannot say that it is fully independent.
Alina Radu also said that a large part of the mass media pays increased attention to starts and rumors about them and less to the problems faced by the country’s people, who knock at the doors of editorial office in the hope that they will be helped by journalists in such problems as justice, the violation of human rights, etc. A solution is for the employers of publications and editorial staff to agree with the journalists the space that can be devoted to national problems and to stars from abroad.
Gender equality expert Daniela Terzi-Barbarosie said the mass media in Moldova do not work much to educate the consumers of media. “I don’t know if somebody thought about the necessity of changing the mentality of the people in the last 20 years. Why should we complain about the people’s narrow interest in artificial news as the media outlets didn’t actually promote media products of a high quality, which would center on strategic needs? As we overlook this objective, we lost the essence in these 22 years,” she stated.
Executive director of the Association of Independent Press Petru Macovei said the plagiarism in the mass media is a worrisome thing. The editors, those who take decisions in editorial offices, allow borrowing a part of the articles and this is a problem. The fact that the journalists and the editors feel their blame is proven by their rapid reaction to the suggestions of the Press Council. The editors thus make direct reference to the source, with direct link, in accordance with the Deontological Code. But this way the problem will not be solved.
