The third mass media monitoring report produced by the Association of Independent Press (API) and the Independent Journalism Center (CJI) says a part of the monitored TV channels didn’t observe the regulations concerning the coverage of the campaign prior to the presidential elections and the Election Code. The monitoring covered the period between October 7 and 13. The media portals didn’t ensure the pluralism of sources and the right to reply. The monitored print media also didn’t ensure pluralism.
In a news conference at IPN, CJI executive director Nadine Gogu said the private TV channels with national coverage Prime TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and Publika TV continued to massively promote candidate Marian Lupu and to disfavor Andrei Nastase. However, Jurnal TV favored massively Andrei Nastase and disfavored Marian Lupu in most of the cases, especially in the news items of an indirect electoral character. NTV Moldova and Accent TV favored mainly Igor Dodon and disfavored slightly Marian Lupu. The national public broadcaster Moldova 1 and the channels Realitatea TV, Pro TV Chisinau, TV7 and N4 had a relatively balanced behavior and didn’t have evident tendencies to favor or disfavor electoral competitors.
Nadine Gogu said the imbalance in term of gender has decreased. The male sources represented 66% of the sources in materials, while the female sources 33%. Some of the channels ensured an increase of over 10% in the number of materials that made reference or quoted female sources.
As to online portals and newspapers, API executive director Petru Macovei said Andrei Nastase during the monitoring period was the most favored candidate by the frequency of appearances and the positive context in which he was presented at all the 12 monitored portals, being more favored than disfavored. Marian Lupu was most often presented in a negative context, while Igor Dodon, Maia Sandu and Mihai Ghimpu were rather disfavored than favored.
A lot of the materials had only one source of information and most of the news items about different conflict aspects of the election campaign didn’t respect the principle of pluralism of sources. Most of the published materials referred to the behavior and statements of candidates or potential candidates, the accusations made against these by opponents, etc.
In the print media, the election runners who were most often disfavored by the frequency of appearances and the negative context included Mihai Ghimpu, Igor Dodon and Marian Lupu. These didn’t respect the principle of pluralism of sources, while their news articles about conflicts were unbalanced.
The representatives of API and CJI expressed their dissatisfaction with the frequency at which the Broadcasting Coordination Council intends to publish its monitoring reports, saying these should be made public more often given the Council’s role of regulator of the media market.
The CJI/API monitoring is carried out within a project financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (U.S.) and the Council of Europe.
