Moldova's and Gagauzia's public broadcasters stagnate on path to professional standards

The national public broadcaster “Teleradio-Moldova” and the regional public broadcaster “Teleradio-Gagauzia” are stagnating on the path to adopting the professional standards dictated by the broadcasting laws and ethics rules. This is the conclusion inserted in the report of 10 media and human rights NGOs which, under the umbrella of the Electronic Press Association APEL, monitor how the Broadcasting Code is being implemented. Vasile State, program coordinator for the project, told a press conference on Thursday that the sixth monitoring round of Teleradio-Moldova's programs revealed a change toward worse. The expert doesn't rule out that it might have a connection with the approaching electoral period. The monitors found that the rate of biased news has increased considerably, and so has the share of laudatory media reports, in breach of the principles of equidistance and impartiality. The audience is informed mainly from a single source, official, as a rule. The top three state officials enjoy broad coverage, unlike the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition. Teleradio-Gagauzia is in a similar situation. According to expert Eugen Rybca, the newscasts and the aired reports fail to meet professional requirements: most reports use a single source, the plurality of opinions is not observed, biased reports are still the core of the newscasts. The public gets few reports of local interest. News programs in Romanian have disappeared from the broadcasting schedule of the local radio. There are no reports critical of the government, investigative materials or reports on controversial subjects, not one at all, Rybca said. The experts also monitored the way how the Parliament examined the performance report of the Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) for 2007. They have concluded that the legislature had a merely formal approach in hearing the report and showed little respect for the independence and autonomy of the BCC. According to Rybca, the Parliament's decision to have the BCC devise a plan of measures to improve its performances and the activity of all the broadcasters contradicts the legislation, because it represents “an interference and even censorship on the activity of the broadcasters and the BCC”. The project “Monitoring the Implementation of the Broadcasting Code” is financed by the Soros Foundation Moldova and aims to institute a mechanism of public surveillance on the way in which the audiovisual laws are implemented in Moldova.