Number of electoral materials in print media on the rise

The number of materials about the election campaign in the print media has increased from 599 to 605, mass media expert Petru Macovei said while presenting the firth monitoring report produced by the Independent Journalism Center within the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to the report, the volume of advertisements in newspapers has doubled compared with last week. In six of the monitored papers - Flux, Moldova Suverana, Nezavisimaya Moldova, Evenimentul Zilei, Gazeta de Sud, and Cuvantul – the number of news stories was lower than that of opinion articles, while Vesti Gagauzii published no news item about the elections. With some exceptions, the press continues to cover the election campaign from the perspective of the election runners that they sympathize or on which they depend. The website omg.md and the papers Nezavisimaya Moldova and Moldova Suverana are biased in favor of the PCRM. They behave like party media institutions and aim to discredit the opponents of the Communists. On the other hand, these publications promote the idea that only the PCRM can govern the country and has solutions for everything. According to Petru Macovei, Timpul de Dimineata and Jurnal de Chisinau presented the PCRM in an unfavorable light in most of their articles, while the Liberal parties, especially the non-Communist ones, in a favorable light. The member parties of the AEI are also favored by the regional newspapers Cuvantul and Gazeta de Sud. The papers Panorama, Flux and Evenimentul Zilei are biased in favor of the PUM, the PPCD and, respectively, the PDM. The news agency Infotag and the portal unimedia.md had a relatively balanced electoral behavior, presenting different opinions and positions of the parties in the context of the election campaign, while the agency Moldpres published favorable materials about the AEI and the PLDM. The Independent Journalism Center plans to publish a final monitoring report on the covering of the election campaign by the mass media early in December.